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1. Comment - EarthLink Criticized for DNS Redirects

   (Sep 18, 2006 - 10:21 AM)

   foxfyre wrote:
   Earthlink can do as they please. It is their business. They can adhere to standards or deviate from them as they choose. And each person is free to decide whether to use their services.
   
   To make a decision, one has to be aware of the problem. DNS Monkey Business is insideous because unless you are severed from a site you know is operational, you assume Earthlink's DNS substitution is representative of the real status of the internet.
   
   When Earthlink severed me from my webhosted company site, the situation was obvious to me that the DNS was in error. Any other Earthlink user attempting to access my company website won't know anything is wrong. Earthlink will tell them no such site exists (even though its the first listed in the three major search engine). The natural assumption is that my company is no longer in business. Earthlink should at least post a legal ambiguity on their no site found page to suggest this possibility to the user - I suspect they'll be sued in time by a lot of companies like mine.
   
   So, you can't make a decision if you don't know there is a problem. Earthlink is unlikely to shine a light on what they're doing. If they did it owuld likely be in the small print where companies like credit cards services bury rate increases.
   
   For my own status, I set OpenDNS as the DNS for our dialup account. With that connections are very quick, percieved to be 3x to 4x faster than Earthlink's DNS lookups. I set an alternate dialup telephone number to use Earthlink's standard DNS (automatically downloaded). That allows me to check if my company website is accessible to Earthlink users. I was severed last Wednesday, Monday morning we are still severed. OpenDNS connects to it quickly.
   
   So I can do maintenance but I may have a lot of potential customers blocked by Earthlink's DNS. This is a bigger problem that will probably get legal in time. For the moment I can still do the website management required through our Earthlink+OpenDNS configuration. I can't see any reason to continue with a ISP that blocks users from my business.
   
   -Grahame

2. Comment - EarthLink Criticized for DNS Redirects

   (Sep 16, 2006 - 11:45 AM)

   I'm a Earthlink customer (for years) but their DNS service has severed me from my webhosted site. For about a week or two my site was only accessible about one in three attempts as I tried to FTP or Browse it. I initially assumed the webhost company had oversold their bandwidth and so I was looking for another webhost company.
   
   Then I got a call from someone that accessed my website with no trouble... that was the first I heard it was even running. I accessed my website without any problem using my neighbor's Net-Zero account.
   
   Knowing that the website was fine, I considered the problem to be either my own firewall or Earthlink. My firewall "appeared" fine so calling Earthlink I was told after a handoff that a new DNS package was installed Sept 6th. That's when I started having problems though by the 14th I had no access to my website.
   
   Earthlink said they were aware of the problem and were working on it. I hung up thinking maybe a day or two and problem gone...
   
   My neighbor allowed me to do some maintenance from his computer. With his permission I then used his account on my computer, thereby testing if my firewall was causing some buried trouble. Access was fine, actually it was better than Earthlink. The problem was more or less localized to Earthlink and DNS updates.
   
   Kicking back with the success of localizing the problem, I thought to search-engine "Earthlink DNS problem" which lead me to several pages dating back as far as January of 2006. Now I appear to have learned the dirty little secret that Earthlink's DNS is unlikely to be fixed quickly, and they're doing sneaky DNS error redirects. I saw that once (maybe I had javascript enabled at the time) but I'm prevented from seeing my own website and its a real site, not a non-existant website.
   
   I think Earthlink has screwed up. Losing me as a customer will shock a lot of my friends.
   Looks like I'll have to pay half as much at Net Zero for better service... could be worse. :)