On recomendation from someone on this list, I signed up for Speakeasy DSL. The helped me set up a primary name server (DNS) and they ran a secondary name server for a few extra dollars per month. This has been working well for about a decade. Speakeasy was sold to MegaPath, who yesterday sent me a message that included this:
Dear MegaPath Customer,
This email is to advise you that MegaPath is migrating its legacy Speakeasy ISP, web hosting, webmail and DNS services to a more advanced platform.
<Braindead "customer-experience" happy market-talk deleted>
Going forward, we will no longer support secondary DNS services. If your domain is set up in this manner, please be sure to make the proper changes to avoid a post-migration service disruption.
This all happens next Tuesday. I read this is "We are breaking what has worked for a decade, there is nothing you can do, have fun finding a new ISP in two days." I was wall-punching cursing mad. When I calmed down a bit I began to think, if they don't break anything else, maybe it's not so bad. The system was designed to tolerate failure. _I_ was not designed to tolerate _intentional_ failure, but everything should still work if the secondary name server is broken. Since I have only one IP address on one DSL line, I never really saw the need for a secondary server in the first place. I run a primary server because (A) I like to think of myself as a programmer, and it is self education to figure out how to do it. (B) Sometimes I create subdomains and run test program servers in them. The RFC's require a second name server, and the registrar asks for it, but who's going to care really? If the primary name server goes out, so do all other servers in the domain, since it's all really just one computer. What would you recommend? If anyone else has the same problem, I could be your secondary, and you could be mine. -- Keith