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Ranking The Domain Name Registrars 115

Posted by jamie from the not-affiliated-with-Consumer-Reports® dept.
Thinking of buying a domain name? You may be interested to learn that at least one registrar will only let you lease your name, and also that you'll be signing different agreements, depending on which registrar you use. You might want to browse the Domain Name Buyer's Guide, a new site which rates the (directly-ICANN-approved) registrars according to both price and whether their contracts are consumer-friendly. (Incidentally, Chris Truax, the lawyer who represented Etoy in its domain-name fiasco with eToys, helped build this site.)
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Ranking The Domain Name Registrars More

Ranking The Domain Name Registrars

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  • I've been quite pleased with joker.com and their price is reasonable.
  • Their web design could use a little work, it's is straight out of the stock Frontpage template....
  • It's not long till ANY domain name become prime real estate.

  • No CORE, no TUCOWS (Score:4)

    by Alexey Nogin ( 10307 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @12:56PM (#1108173) Homepage
    Unfortunatelly, they are not rating CORE and TUCOWS registrars yet... And they are usually the least expensive ones.

  • Interesting site, but a few quirks (Score:3)

    by mind21_98 ( 18647 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @12:58PM (#1108174) Homepage Journal
    I like the site a lot (hope it doesn't get Slashdotted because I noticed that it uses Frontpage elements on its pages), but I have a few problems with it:

    1. It uses too many graphics (a no-no if you're being billed based on bandwidth)
    2. There's animated GIF's (they aren't bad because of the Unisys stuff, but these particular ones take your attention off the rest of the registrars.) Unless this is what they were trying to achieve in the first place.

    On another note this site deserves a good look. These rankings will almost gurantee that you'll find the registrar you're looking for.
  • Man, I had my domain stolen under NetSol, and the bastards took two weeks to give it back. All some idiot had to do to take it was send out an email. To get it back I had to give my drivers license, 20 faxes, numerous phone calls, e-mails, and lost hair. Bastards deserve that one star.Sharkey
    www.badassmofo.com [badassmofo.com]

  • Yes! Finally! (Score:3)

    by MaximumBob ( 97339 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @12:58PM (#1108176)
    After all these years, I finally have a guide to help me squat efficiently! Ha!
  • That is worrying indeed and the very suggestion and had me worrying to check the registrar I used for my badtech.com site (looks safe thankfully). This is very scary however, if you acutualy make a success of a domain I guess they could just take it back when the lease expires and auction it to the highest bidder, nasty! This kind of thing won't work against trademark names but it could really hurt the smaller web publishers if it became common place. The registrar I used 'Name Secure reserves the right to revoke your domain name at any time, without notice' which is a little scary although I would guess they would need to supply justification, although this reinforces the need to read the small print.

  • A word of warning... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    While this is somewhat offtopic, I would avoid RegisterFree. It's been about a month and I still have not recieved the key to update the database with my nameserver information. I've asked them for it twice and have as of yet recieved nothing.
  • I second that. I just got my domainname from joker.com and since they are so cheap, I actually let them do DNS, too. Domain+Primary DNS+Secondary DNS = $24

  • It's not surprising to see he used FrontalPage and one of those lame theme templates.

    Anyone could do that.

    I won't be impressed until he manages to optimize his directory structure and shorten those godawful URLs.

  • Network Solutions overcharges on their late fee (Score:3)

    by maynard ( 3337 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @01:02PM (#1108181) Journal
    I just got hit with a $29.00 late fee for being one day late for a $35.00 renual payment. That's almost 100% of my yearly charge!

    You have been warned...
  • It's not so much about the names as about the IP addresses. We are Running Out of Address Space quickly.

    One more good reason to switch to IPv6, and ask your ISP to do the same. :)

  • A suggestion... (Score:4)

    by shiwala ( 93327 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @01:02PM (#1108183)
    If you used another domain registrar, use their feedback form [domainname...sguide.com] and tell them about your experience so they can include your registrar on the list.
  • But the page has got to go! There is no way I am going to listen to a company that uses a Microsoft Frontpage theme! Not only is it disgusting, but it is lame too. Get rid of it! I prefer black text on white background to that... And they think I am going to shell them out money, or my time?
  • Read their FAQ [domainname...sguide.com]! They are not rating CORE and TUCOWS registrars. At least, not yet.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion


  • The service is indeed a very welcome addition to those who want to register their own domains. However, it (currently) still lacks info regarding the downstream registrars of either CORE or TUCOWS.

    I hope that not that distance in the future we can have the info on the TUCOWS/CORE registrars.

    Again, kudos go to the people who offer the registrar ranking online.

  • Excellent reference (Score:3)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @01:08PM (#1108188) Homepage
    They are VERY interested in the legal aspects, and having seen how they ranked NSI, I may just be switching registrars.

    Anyone else get paranoid over the little ownership and transferrence clauses? I sure as heck am not interested giving someone else the right to revoke my domain!
  • these guys charge you on top of internic's fees. tcd004
  • Just don't pay them. After 90 days you will get a "FINAL NOTICE", and eventually it will cycle out.

    I've allowed many-a-domain to 'die' this way.
  • They have left out all of the CORE registrars and all of the OpenSRS folx, which are, IMHO, some of the best price/performance registrars out there.

    Nobody on that list comes close in price to some of the registrars affiliated with the missing organizations: Joker.com domains go for $12.00/yr. and the OpenSRS guys wholesale names at $10/yr.

    Anyway...just thought I'd point that out.
  • I have to agree that the design of the site basically sucks... but the informational content is really outstanding... I had no idea that registrars could bend the legal rules so much.. whatever happened to ICANN providing escrow for domain names?

  • um.. but no countries? (Score:5)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @01:13PM (#1108193) Homepage
    while the website here is an EXTREMELY good thing-- something that should have been made a LONG time ago-- it still is very incomplete.

    i say this because it is completely restricted to .com, .net, and .org, totally ignoring everything else.

    Some of those other-country TLDs-- .nu, .to, whatever-- may be very good for some people. I for one registered a .cx domain (see webpage and email adress above) because i liked the price (i haven't found anything comparable in .com, .net or .org areas) and have been very happy with it so far. But other than .cx, i don't really know what country TLDs are open. There is no list i am aware of that lists all the TLDs along with who you register that TLD with, how much they charge, are people outside of that country legally allowed to register domains there, are there any odd legal rules (i. e. is it possible that you could have your domain name revoked at will), or even WHERE those domains are registered. Where do you register a .my domain? (malasia, right? no?) Because damned if i know. It isn't nic.my.

    and what about .int? (international. i think. i think the U.N. controls it but i'm not sure.) did you even know there was a .int? (i'm only asking because i want unsigned.int or l.int.. i don't think i'm legally allowed to have them though :)) .int isn't important, but it's indicative of the fact nobody really knows what's going on with the TLDs anymore. At least nobody you're likely to ever get to talk to, or for that matter come across on IRC/USENET..

    Anything ranking or even _talking about_ non-international domains, and comparing them side by side with the international [.com .net .org] domains, would be an amazingly valuable resource. i hope that's what www.domainnamebuyersguide.com evolves into. At the moment they only offhandedely mention that country TLDs exist in the FAQ. As far as i'm aware, .us isn't even MENTIONED on the site anywhere. i thought everyone was supposed to be switching to .us..?
    At any rate the domain name buyer's guide shows great promise and i wish them luck..

    -mcc-baka
    INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS THEFT
  • I keep an eye on (117 so far) spammers domain names and watch for them to expire. The moment they do, I register them (yoink!), and then ignore all their attempts to contact me. Email autorouted to /dev/null, listed phone numbers ring endlessly (no answering machine to even give them a place to babble or result in phone records of completed phone calls to "prove" they contacted me), mail shredded unread and I refuse registered mail (and UPS and FedEx and refuse always to sign for anything received) so it gets returned to sender. It's a lot of fun, really!

  • OOG THINK THIS GOOD IDEA!!! (Score:5)

    by OOG_THE_CAVEMAN ( 165540 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @01:19PM (#1108195)
    OOG BACK AFTER PASSING OUT FROM DRINKING BINGE, ALTHOUGH HAVE BAD HANGOVER!!! BUT OOG THEN FIND COOL GREEN SEVEN LEAF PLANT GROWING OUTSIDE CAVE!!! OOG HAVE MUCH FUN SMOKING PLANT!!! BUT OOG START FEEL DIZZY NOW...

    arrrr... whoa a domain rankings site... that's grooovvyyy, HEHE! But like, hey man, it's about time that someone rated all the domain registrars, cuz thats groovy. Like this one time, HEHE, I was totally gone, and I was thinking about getting me a domain and stuff. And dude, I knew I needed to like, register a domain from someone, but there were so many choices, man!!!! It totally blew my mind! Like there's NSI, tucows, CORE, Domain Discover, and all those places, and I'm all thinking... what's a dude supposed to do? There were, like, waaayyyy too many options, man!! And anyway, I started out all stoked about this domain thing, but with all those registrar places, I couldn't make up my mind! So like, this potentially groovilicious thang gets all bogus because I couldn't make up my mind. So it's definitely quite radical of this dude to write this domain registrar review site. I just went and saw the article and I was all, "WHOA man, that's awesome, HEHEHE!!" Well like dude, I think I need to go repack the pipe cuz it's kinda getting low and stuff... HEHE! But like, that site is cooooooolll, HEHEHEHE...

    ARGGGHH!!! WHY OOG HEAD HURT AGAIN??? OOG'S EYES ALL RED AND BLOODSHOT!!! HMM, OOG HAVE MUNCHIES NOW!!! OOG GO EAT NINE BAGS OF FRITOS IN CAVE!!!
  • They claim to offer "free domain name registration" but they they give you the "use" of a domain name of your choice for a year and you're also required to have a streaming advertisement on the site. You MUST provide your name, address, age, occupation, employment, income, etc. to any direct marketers of the company's choice. You must accept all email, mail, telephone, and direct solicitations to your Web site and at the end of a year you either have to give up your service, get a new domain name through them, or pay for the domain name and pay any transfer fees and taxes. Plus, you agree to 'defend' and 'hold harmless' the service. Which means: if you ever do get sued, you have to pay all of their legal expenses and costs. You also can't sue them, even if it IS their fault."


    flatrabbit,
    peripheral visionary
  • I think you should only be allowed to keep a domain name for 2 day periods. Think how cool it would be if every 2 days, all of the sites that you frequent would have completely different content. It would make search engins valuable again.
  • Yeah, I'd like to switch too... anyone have any info on how to go about doing that?

  • Anyone remember the Microsoft Hotmail non-renewal fiasco [slashdot.org]?

    I wonder if MS got slapped with this fine. In fact, I wonder what happened since the check was supposedly auctioned off on ebay. Anyone has any news?

  • Questions re: Assignability of domain names (Score:3)

    by alkali ( 28338 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @01:27PM (#1108200)
    It appears that many of the registrars use contract terms requiring the registrar's consent to the assignment of domain names. (Or making domain names generally nonassignable, which amounts to the same thing, because the registrar can always consent to waive the nonassignability provision in any particular case.) Three questions:

    (1) Has anyone ever been refused consent to assign a domain name?

    (2) I understand that in many jurisdictions, nonassignability provisions in contracts (other than contracts for personal services) are enforceable only if they are "reasonable." Does anyone have any intelligence on whether an assignability clause is "reasonable" under the law of any jurisidiction? (That is to say, has anyone ever heard of a court considering this issue? I suspect that most registrars provide for mandatory arbitration in their contracts, and that consequently courts would not have the opportunity to consider this issue.)

    (3) Aside from alleviation of chronic corporatist paranoia, what benefit do registrars hope to realize from these clauses? (Put another way, what disaster do they hope to prevent?)

  • Legal Consequence (Score:4)

    by bbleier ( 35947 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @01:33PM (#1108201) Homepage
    There may be other legal consequences. I'm sure that the reason for leasing is precisely so that they can extract/extort more money on renewal. However, this could have other consequences they don't expect.

    1) Taxation if domains are found to be property and to have value.

    2) Liability for improper use. Do they really want to supervise every single domain name? If it is their property, they might be liable for its use, where providing a registration service where the user putatively owns the name might not. The NIC got sued by the AG of Pennsylvania a couple years back for issuing a couple white supremist sites. How much better if they "owned" the domain! ;-)

    3) Competition in registration makes this a lease of what? If any service can register the name, how is it that they own anything which might be leased?

    In any event, this is a bit of creativity that may cost them. Live by the sword, die by the sword kind of thing...

  • Having transferred domains through NSI in the past, I can tell you first hand that they actually have a very good system in place to protect the rights both of the party transferring the domain and the recipient of the transfer.

    I was quite impressed with their thoroughness and professionalism, really. Having done a transfer through NSI, I wouldn't hesitate to continue using them if that clause is domainnamebuyersguide's (*that* name's too long!) only beef with them...

    They're not perfect, but I really think NSI probably has a better handle on all the aspects of the domain name business than most newcomers. (After all, they've been mercilessly flamed by us for years. Besides, I'd kinda hate to give up DD26! [grin])
  • Why can't I own a domain name? Why do I have to lease one from a registrar? If I can provide all the hardware and software necessary to host and DNS a domain, what am I paying a registrar for?
  • I remember a while back, several people were unhappy (and rightly so) because NetSol had bobbled on releasing their domains to new registrars they wanted to transfer them to -- apparently merely out of spiteful perversity.

    Has this situation been cleared up? Does anyone have datapoints either way? I have a couple domains I'd like to shift, but *I do not want to lose them*.

    Maybe an advance letter to David Holtzman?

    Cheers,
    -- jra
    -----
  • I've had pretty good success with register.com. Its not the cheapest, but its got a decent interface and doesn't require an initial 2 year contract.
  • I use Register.com for all my domain names. They have an excellent online control panel that lets you add level 1 and level 3 subdomains, no problems nor confusions like Network Solutions.

    Also, they have FREE DNS services, so all you have to worry about is IP addresses. So easy!

    Also, one time my DNS table got corrupted, but they promptly fixed it.

    Network Solutions can kiss my ass. They charge extra for everything, and also make things overly complicated.

    "...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of
  • I know what you really want to know: What did DOMAINNAMEBUYERSGUIDE.com choose for their registrar?

    The answer: names4ever.com.

    OTOH, I'm not sure I'd trust someone who did their page in frontpage to tell me what domain name registrar to use.

  • Yow! WHAT I WANT is a .IN-ADDR.ARPA domain! I want the 1.0.0.127.IN-ADDR.ARPA NAME!

    (Any other bizarre TLD's we can think of? What was this special domain created for URNs called, again?)

  • Tita-nic.com [tita-nic.com] tries to list the best options available
    to easily move your domains to better registrars [tita-nic.com] .
    it's point and click and only takes about five days.
    your domains will be safer and you save money at the same time.
    good bye NSI/Network Solutions/crooks :-)

    kind regards philippe, http://A-Z-Internet.com
  • i got stuck with a renewal fee from netsol during the time that i was attempting to transfer from netsol to a tucows registrar .. i sent them a nasty email saying that i never agreed to renew and they agreed to let me transfer without charging me .. i suggest you do the same thing if they want you to pay a late fee like that !! if you look around you can find tucows registrars for as low as $10/an. -- its all i use now -abf.
  • I've found that the best place to register is http://www.alphapython.com/ [alphapython.com]; they're not only cheap ($20/yr) but also provide great service as well.


    __
  • I see a lot of bytching about the site's presentation, and especially about the fact it was done in Frontpage. Don't like it? Do something about it! We're all closet web designers, and while many of us should stay in said closet, someone could whip out a 200% improvement in a couple of hours. So toss in a little elbow grease and send em a concept page. If one of you is half as hot as most of the complaintants act, they'll be floored..

  • GoodByeNSI.com (Score:3)

    by StopLifePatents ( 121757 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @02:19PM (#1108213) Homepage
    The great domain name speculator and fighter for free speach,
    "domainiac" Russ Smith, opened a site where he registers
    and transfers domains for you to OpenSRS.org :

    GoodByeNSI.com [goodbyensi.com] or DumpNSI.com [dumpnsi.com]
  • Where do you register a .my domain?

    www.alldomains.com [alldomains.com] lists information on registrars for various country domains.

    *.com.my is www.mynic.net [mynic.net].

    --

  • If you are intersted in getting reviews of websites offering the same or similar services, everyweek in Newsweek magazine in the Cyberscope section they rate 3 competing sites against one another. Quite useful!

  • OTOH, I'm not sure I'd trust someone who did their page in frontpage to tell me what domain name registrar to use.

    I must say, I too don't put a whole lot of merit on their opinions, due mostly to the obviously amatuerish implementation. I am professinal and trust the opinion (or at least take into account) the opinions of other professionals. I can't imagine that the folks that put together this evaluation have ever done professional web work. So, I would conclude that their perspective is signficantly different than my own and I've certainly taken their opinion with a grain of salt.

    What's funny is that the site propably does appeal to squatters, which very well could be who they are trying to target with the review.

    -k
  • at first I looked forward to the competition and choices and I vowed to never use NetworkSolutions again because they've been such assholes.

    However, I admin a colo and as a favor to friends I host their domains. After the first one registered with an alternate domain, I realized that I would have to establish a technical contact at each alternate registry, and learn how they do it and... and suddenly, it just seems simpler to keep using Network Solutions. I'll have to think of some other way to punish them.

  • Does anyone here know how to register .co.jp domains? That Alldomains site dosn't have it, and I'd really like to know where you register those...
  • Well, we had to register somewhere before we had rated all the registrars. We don't endorse any particular registrar and we aren't associated with any particular registrar. We also registered some other domain names at some other registrars to give us a better feel for how they operated. You'll note that Names4ever.com did not get the highest rating and that the comments in the customer service section discuss our experiences with them.

    BTW, we aren't really trying to tell anyone which registrar to use. The site is really about putting information in people's hands so they can make their own decisions. The rankings are just a short-hand method of letting people know where to start. That's why we included detailed contact information and links to the registration agreements and dispute policies on the detail pages.

    Chris at Domain Name Buyers Guide

  • Because the registrars lobbied hard and paid well to inject themselves into the process. They provide a valuable service, to be sure, but it should not be mandatory IMHO. All they are now is a regulated sales channel for NSI who is laughing all the way to the bank as .com registrations
    are at an all time high on the order of a million new regs a month. Anybody remember when all ISP's were registrars?

  • It's just a matter of time 'til the US federal government decides to take over. After a few more big companies get pissed off that somethint similar to their trademark is taken, Congress will have a surprise vote and write up a set of rule that everyone has to follow.

    Spend the money, get the domain...

    A few days after, an intern will remind a congressman that other countries use the internet, too...


    ---
    Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!

  • Some of those other-country TLDs-- .nu, .to, whatever-- may be very good for some people. I for one registered a .cx domain (see webpage and email adress above) because i liked the price (i haven't found anything comparable in .com, .net or .org areas) and have been very happy with it so far. But other than .cx, i don't really know what country TLDs are open. There is no list i am aware of that lists all the TLDs along with who you register that TLD with, how much they charge, are people outside of that country legally allowed to register domains there, are there any odd legal rules (i. e. is it possible that you could have your domain name revoked at will), or even WHERE those domains are registered. Where do you register a .my domain? (malasia, right? no?) Because damned if i know. It isn't nic.my.

    A list of all IANA TLDs, together with (variable-quality) contact information for each, is available here [uninett.no]. And yes, this includes Malaysia (.my).

  • Complete list of accredited registrars (Score:5)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @02:57PM (#1108223) Homepage
    You can find the complete list of accredited and operational, accredited and non-operational, and pre-accredited registrars here [icann.org].
  • What i the diffrence between NI, TUCOWS, CORE and the others? I registered a domain with NetSol and have had no trouble, and the domain is almost a year old..
  • Sounds like a good idea, but doesn't it get
    kind of expensive?
  • This javascript will get rid of their ad banner:

    if (top.frames.length!=0) {
    top.location=document.location
    }

    But from the other problems you describe it seems like a bad idea in general, especially when dotster.com has domains for $15 and joker.com for 12Eu, which is pretty much nothing considering that its like $1.25 a month if you think of it that way

  • Well, if you say so. However I note that the government just got out of the business and made NSI let other people play, so it probably isn't real likely.

    The point of breaking the hammerlock on DNS by NSI was to prevent that 'monolithic entity running the show' disease. I note NSI had to be sued to get the Internic database from their clutches. If the government, who built the system, farmed it out, it stands to reason they won't be rushing back into it unless total chaos breaks loose.

  • Hi, PGP authentication. Bye.
  • Wow, and I thought I had it good with DD72! :-)

    NSI still has a wretched email-based domain modification system that must date from the prehistoric era.

    When I tried, I was able to reach someone who was reasonably helpful. When I tried registering a domain via Joker.com, I was never able to make it work because apparently you have to register your name servers using some horribly confusing process that apparently required that I use servers that were never, ever used for a NSI domain, which I couldn't do :-(.

    D

    ----
  • This doesn't work on MSIE 5 though, but seems to work fine with Netscape 4.* (and Mozilla?)

    Use the Window-target: _top header in HTTP. With a CGI, put it before the Content-type header, or with PHP3 just use:

    header("Window-target: _top");

    Again, it works fine in NS4.*, but it doesn't appear to work with MSIE 5, at least not at my school. Maybe the JavaScript solution could be the MSIE solution.

  • Here's a good question that this site has inspired:

    Say I've registered my domain name under a crappy site (such as Network Solutions). Is there a way to re-register, or transfer the registration to another company's domain, or am I stuck with these schmucks forever?

    HeB
  • Would someone please explain the difference between "leasing" a domain name and "owning" it, which consists of paying ongoing annual renewal fees? I only see two possibilities:

    Benefiting squatters who want to own a name for the long haul but who want to make some money off it in the mean time

    Giving up all sorts of rights associated with ownership in exchange for what may be a smaller annual fee.

    As someone already pointed out, anyone would have to be insane to market a name only to see it revert to its owner after it became popular and the lease expired. Maybe non-commercial non-competitive obscure sites may not suffer as much, but then what are they doing buying their own domain name in the first place?

  • Any other bizarre TLD's we can think of?

    .nato [iiia.org]? .fx? .gb?

    Mind you, .banc seems bizarre enough to me...


    --
    This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
  • How do the different registrars keep from leasing or selling the same name to different people?

    What if Bob tried to register nameofsomething.com on Friday through register.com and Christina tried to register nameofsomething.com the same day through another registrar? Which does it go to. And what prevents the registrars from double registering domain names? Is there a central power that assigns them all?

    Starskita

    !
    Starskita

  • OOG IN TROUBLE!!!! ACTUALLY SMOKING IS ILLEGAL IN CAVE, EVEN IF IT IS LEAF PLANT!!! UGG INFORM JUDGE FRIENDS AND OGG GO TO PRISON BUT IT IS PROBABLY BETTER PLACE THAN OOG OPEN SOURCE CAVE!!! ALSO UGG BRING MANY LAWSUITS!!! OOG SUBJECT TO SALSHDOT RESTRAINING ORDER!!!

    UGG ALSO TOP LAYWER FOR NETWORK SOLUTIONINC, AND BRING SUBPOENA AGAINST DOMAINNAMEBUYERSGUIDE!!! INFORMATION ONE STAR IS FACTLY INCORRECT AND IS LIBELLOUS LIE!! NETWORK SOLUTIONINC IS BEST SOLUTION FOR CORPORATE CUSTOMER WHO WANTS TO PAY MUCH MONEYS FOR DOMAIN NAME AND GO THROUGH EXTRA FUN BUREAUCRASY TRANSFERRAL PROCEDURE AND THEN LOSE DOMAIN TO EMAIL SPOOFING! THIS IS WHAT CORPORATE CUSTOMER LIKES!!!! UGG SUE FOR DAMAGES CAUSED BY CONSUMER REVIEW SITE!!

    UGG NOTES OOG CANNOT HAVE A DOTCOM BECAUSE IT IS TAKEN!! INCIDENTALLY UGG ALSO BELIEVE THAT BUYING UP FREE NAMES WITH NO INTENTION OF USING THEM BUT TO SELL THEM ON IS VALID BUSINESS PRACTICE ENSHRINED IN LAW!!!

    FINALLY TO SUM UP CASE, OOG IS TYPING FUNNY.

    IAAL.

  • They're reversed. Dotster has a lower price than NSI, for example, and Dotster had two stars for price while NSI had three. Looking through the list briefly, there doesn't seem to be any rationale to how many price stars are awarded in comparison with the actual prices.

    The legal rankings work as expected: the more stars, the better the ranking.




    Regards,
  • I've used register.com to register a few domains over the past few months. At first it seemed like a pretty good deal, until I found a problem. Register.com's web based dns hosting program will not let you point aliases (something.someplace.com) to IP addresses. The addresses must already resolve to something. This is annoying at the least. Buyer beware.
    -lj 'Oh I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK!
  • sexxybabes.com.org.net.or.anything is not taken yet.

    Not yet, no. But resorting to mis-spelling words in order to get a domain name is surely a sign that things have gone too far?

    It's the fencing of common land all over again. What was previously held to be a public realm becomes property, to the benefit of almost nobody.

    The law doth punish the website author,
    Who builds a site at a domain with a name a bit like another,
    But leaves the greater felon loose,
    Who buys up all the domains and puts nothing there just to earn a quick buck off authors who want to build something at a domain they would previously have got for a reasonable price.

    Hmm... scanning's not quite there yet. Needs work.


    --
    This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
  • Understandable that the GPL goggles would render your internet vision totally useless.

    This is not unlike Juno, FreeDSL, FreePC, any free email, free dial up internet, free[anything].

    You become a pawn in the direct market game. Not new, and not surprising. You just can't get something for nothing, not now, not ever.
  • I have not had this problem. I have aliases pointing to different IPs. I do not understand what you are talking about.

    (I am using their DNS, also)
    "...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of
  • ...what's a good site that reviews web site _hosts_? I already registered a domain name and have it bounce to a different host so the user doesn't see the domain name in the URL (and thus bookmarks the wrong URL). This summer, when that service runs out, I'm going to switch to a dedicated host. I have neither the equipment nor the desire to host it myself.

    My site is fairly small -- less than 10MB all together, no cgi's or Java. It doesn't do a whole lot of traffic. E-mail forwarding is a definite plus, but I don't need a buttload of POP accounts. What's a good site to compare hosting plans? Anyone have some personal favorites? I'm looking for something preferably comfortably below $10/mo.
  • It'd be fun to have anything in ARPA, even D.ARPA would be nice.

    The problem with having the reverse of 127.0.0.1 is that most people are masters for it already, and no one would get your lookup...
  • I'm looking at the Overall Ranking, and I click on #2, Domain Discover. After reading some undescriptive "Registrant Rights Information" in the other entries, I go down to Registration Policy Text at the bottom to interpret for myself. It looks pretty cool; There's only a few circumstances that you can get your domain revoked. But what's this.....

    GOVERNING LAW, FORUM The User accepts that Swedish law be applied regarding this agreement and Dispute Policy and that all disputes will be resolved by Gothenburg City Court (Göteborgs tingsrätt) unless otherwise stated in this agreement.

    That's just GREAT! I know nothing about Sweedish law. Going back in the browser shows this on the details page:
    • Governing Law: California, U.S.A.
    • Governing Jurisdiction:San Diego, California, U.S.A.
    Ok, that makes a bunch of sense . . .
    While it was informative and something I'm looking for, it's a total crock. I'll be waiting for the first copycat site.
  • no doubt, go with pair.com [pair.com] (and good luck with your love).

    kind regards philippe, A-Z-Internet.com [a-z-internet.com]
  • The site does have some good content but the presentation is terrible. Beyond the flashing consumer alert drawing all the attention. Their 'stars' ratings make no sence. Sites with widely differing prices have the same stars. The overall stars make absolutely no sence. NSI has an overall rating of 3 and so does Melborne IT. But Melborn has 4,5 and 3 individiual ratings where NSI has 1,1 and 3. So not they can't write HTML and they can't do math.
  • I've done this before on slashdot, and once again I find myself doing the same thing.

    When you register a domain name, it's not all about price, though a lot of people like to hammer on the very obvious fact that some of the more established companies (eg, network solutions) charge fees that are far in excess of other entities. You must also keep in mind that you are paying for a service - and look at what you plan on getting out of that service.

    As a web hosting company, we register a lot of domains in a month. On top of that, we transfer many domains from other hosting companies to our servers. Since the vast majority of currently hosted domains are registered through network solutions, this is a very simple task for us. So long as we host a certain number of domains registered through them, we have a dedicated contact at netsol. What does this mean? If there are ANY problems with either a domain modification or registration request, there is a super nice woman at the other end of a telephone who is just sitting there waiting to help us out. She has the authority to correct about 99% of the problems that we encounter in our daily business. As a host this is one of the most difficult items we face on a daily basis, and this is an invaluable service.

    The buyer's guide is a pretty nice site, but this is definately tailored to the individual domain buyer. However, at this point in time the individual is not the largest domain consumer -- it is still the ISP/IPP (even though we may do it on behalf of the individual). As such, what remains very important is the service that one can expect as a bulk buyer. While netsol continues to remain comepetitive and friendly to the bulk buyer (and they certainly have the resources to throw at this segment) they will continue to remain king.

    (At least until we/other bulk registrants, get our act together and either use open srs or totally get ourselves going as our own registrar - either of which still require a rather serious investment on our part).

  • Here's a hard one to get:

    .int - I saw it browsing some UN site or other...

    Personally, I use joker.com - *cheap* domain registration (12 {EU12} - slightly less than US$12). And no, they DON'T sell any hosting service.
  • And they are usually the least expensive ones.

    Yeah, OpenSRS is only $10 per domain per year. The only problem is that you have to buy years in $250+ shots, so you need a bunch of friends to do it with you (not a problem if you have an ACM chapter or LUG around). Of course you can just register a domain for 25 years, which is pretty ridiculous...
  • Would it be off topic to ask how to add a third level domain with NSI? Anyone else ever done this? If so how did you go about it?
  • You know, I did the same thing!

    A couple years ago I got a bunch of spams around Christmastime for a Chili Recipe book. Their e-mail was chilibook@hotmail.com.

    So, I complain to hotmail, and they yank the chilibook account. Right after that, I signed up for hotmail with the chilibook account name! I started getting some of the spammer's mail, which I replied to.... :-)

    "Hey fatso, try a diet! Quit stuffing your face with chili!"

    "Sorry, we're out of Chili, but I've got a burrito in my pants that you can have."

    Well, you get the picture. This kind of stuff really is fun when you're stuck at work with nothing to do during the holidays.
  • pair.com? Dont they charge like 15 buck for like 50 megs of space? Go with www.hoting4less.com That's who I use, it's 25 bucks but they are always on icq so it's easy to get tech quetions in a matter of seconds answered..
  • airwindows.com [airwindows.com] _is_ registered under Network Solutions, from two years ago.

    After the story I read in which the guy tried to change to another registrar and NS closed his account and promptly sold his domain to somebody else before the other registrar could plug it in, I had no stomach for doing anything other than paying them off and praying they wouldn't botch _that_ up. I'm nervous because I paid them by check when they're expecting web-credit-card payments! It's pretty sad when you can't trust the buggers to be paid off and do NOTHING... we'll see. I hope other people are ready to put some heat on them. I don't feel comfortable trifling with them because of how badly they could hose me. Color me extorted ;P

  • Shouldn't the contract be very similar in all case (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @07:44PM (#1108253)
    I mean, doesn't ICANN set out the rules by which someone can have a name?

    I mean, technicall, you don't 'buy' the name. it's not a tangible thing. You don't 'lease' it for the same reason.
    What you do is pay for a service that says name.com will be listed in the root nameservers wiht appropriate records for a period of time set forth in the contract. nothing more.
  • You are paying for the registrar to insert your name into the ROOT DNS servers.

    The root DNS servers *ARE* the service that they are selling. They are saying, pay us, and we'll put an entry in the root servers under these terms. In other words, dns space in .com, .org, and .net, these are the only people who have authority to add/remove things.
    Hey.. I think it should still be run by a benevolent company.. with rules like it had in the old days.. but those days are gone and forgotten by now. Netsol fucked it up royally.
  • Well.... DNS hosting is not part of registration, it's an added service. With normal registration, you must run your own dns server, as it has always been.

    What do you mean... won't let you point aliases to IP addresses? There is no such thing as an 'alias' in DNS. There is CNAME, where one record points to another.. by name, not IP.

    If you mean point IP addresses to names.. that's reverse DNS, and is completely not under thier control.. it's under the control of the ISP who provides the IP space..
  • You don't. Period. Third level domains are added by whoever controls DNS for the second level domains. Go read up on DNS.
  • Thanks for the heads up. We inadvertently put the registration agreement for Port at the link for Domain Discover. We'll be correcting that immediately.

    One of the reason we are pleased to be covered by Slashdot is that we'd knew we get a very thorough going-over by the community. The open source approach can be used to develop more than just an OS!

    Chris at Domain Name Buyers Guide

    Info@DomainNameBuyersGuide.com

  • Ok, I give these guys two thumbs up but I am disapointed that they fail to list the Tucows and Core Registrars since these companies are offering the best deal on domain name registrations. If you want to pay a reasonable price for a domain name I suggest purchasing it through a Tucows or Core reseller. Hopefully they will add these other domain registration companies soon thereby providing a truly beneficial service to their visitors.


    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
    www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
  • Good suggestion, the question is will they take it and actually implement it in their site.


    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
    www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
  • When I tried registering a domain via Joker.com, I was never able to make it work because apparently you have to register your name servers using some horribly confusing process that apparently required that I use servers that were never, ever used for a NSI domain, which I couldn't do.

    That's just plain wrong. The only trick with joker.com is that you have to register name servers (takes about 8-12h) and get them CORE handles (if they don't have them already) - then you can re-use the handles, so if you're registering more domains it's a breeze.

    I love joker.com! I've already registered 3 domains with them and have had *NO* problems. Damn cheap too...

    Jay

    -- polish ccs mirror [prawda.pl]
  • Sorry, but You're wrong.

    .com, .net and .org are international TLDs and anyone may register domains there (not only Networksolutions allows you to do that, but all other registrars too).

    The American, or to be more exact, the USA-namesepace, is called .us (yes, .us does exist!).

    Saluti dall'Italia!
    Markus

  • I think you should only be allowed to keep a domain name for 2 day periods. Think how cool it would be if every 2 days, all of the sites that you frequent would have completely different content.

    People would go back to using IP addresses, just like in the "bad old days" before DNS was widespread and you had to FTP your copy of HOSTS.TXT from SRI-NIC(?) regularly. Now, if IP address allocation were dynamic, too...

    Cheers,
    Philip.

  • Understandable that the GPL goggles would render your internet vision totally useless.

    You are right about many slashdotters, but not all. Some of us are older geeks with families and jobs, and yes brains as well :-)

    This is not unlike Juno, FreeDSL, FreePC, any free email, free dial up internet, free[anything].

    The real issue with NameZero is ownership. Say you have asite that you toiled to build, advertize and maintain. It becomes a success, only to discover that they took it back from you and capitalized on your blood, sweat and tears? Not nice is it?

    A similar thing happened to a friend of mine who had a great idea for a web site. He was web illeterate (only a user) and gave the job to someone, who turned out to be a crook. That crook made himself the contact for the domain (technical, zone, admin, billing) although the registrant is still my friend's company). The crook asked for an exorbitant amount of money or he will pull the site down. When my friend refused to pay, he shut down the site and disappeared (even fled to another country!). Network Solutions, being the dinosaur they are, are not reacting at all to change the details on the domain to allow a different hosting company, ...etc....etc. ad nauseum! See what can happen?

    You become a pawn in the direct market game. Not new, and not surprising. You just can't get something for nothing, not now, not ever.

    I have used Free dialup ISPs in Canada. I have a friend and a relative using them in USA. They are great! You get a lot for nothing! I wish they are available here in the Middle East [2bits.com] and we do not have to pay thru the nose!

  • For international domain registras go to http://www.uninett.no/navn/domreg.html

    FYI name.my is www.mynic.net as nam.au is www.aunic.net (there is more than just com.au there is also asn.au and so forth)
  • Yup indeedie. There are also rules whereby you should be sent real-live certificates and stuff as proof of "ownership" (given the above) which certain companies aren't all that good at. And you should also theoretically be forwarded the mail saying the domain has been activated, too.

    OTOH I'm not so sure about the advice on the site - the section "what about NET and ORG domains, do I want them as well as COM?" is awful! The namespace is confused enough already without people taking names which don't represent what they are. Like, how on earth is 'hotsexygirls' valid as a value-adder in the .net domain?!

    Anyway. Feedback left about one of my domains. And boy it was not a nice experience [custard.org]!
    ~Tim
    --
    .|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,

  • Obviously you have been lucky. I can tell you that register.coms systems are not at all reliable. I have registered several domains with them and the last one (of course I don't use them any more..) ended up being owned by someone wanting to sell it to me for 2000$. The shitty thing is that I registered the domain 1 month before the other guy but since register.coms systems couldn't handle the registration (since they are poorly programmed) and they were not aware of the problem (they are poorly sysadmined), I got like 10 different excuses from their helpdesk and finally they wanted me to send a letter to their president! F*ck that I say. To put it in short: I lost the domain ONLY because of register.coms poor systems. I could even edit the billing info in the ManageMyDomain-service but still the domain had been registered by someone else(who was smart enough not to use register.com).
    I recommend you not to register any domains that are critical to you with them. They can't handle their systems.

  • .fx has a strange story. In short, it doesn't exist, but it almost did. The FX country code is one of these weird things in the ISO standard: it's supposed to stand for metropolitan France. Someone tried to persuade Postel (the late IANA) to let him have it because of the fascist way that the .fr domain is administrated; ultimately, he failed, though.

    Similarly, some friends of mine are currently setting up the fx.* Usenet hierarchy because of problems with fr.* (they're looking for more feeds, btw, so if someone is interested...).

    Of course, the AlterNIC [alternic.org] has some more strange TLDs, for example .porn or .xxx (I have special entries in my /etc/named.conf file to redirect such domains to the AlterNIC root servers not that I use them, but as a protest against the ICANN foolishness).

  • There are individuals out there who are less than honest. They will sell a domain to someone, then go back to the registrar and say that the name was stolen. What is the registrar supposed to do at this point?

    I don't mean to quibble, but this seems like a pretty unlikely scam. It depends on the unlikely existence of both (1) a scammer who acquires a domain name worth something and (2) a purchaser both flush enough to purchase the domain name and naïve enough not to obtain either adequate documentation of the purchase or actual confirmation of the name's transfer from the registrar. Further, it would seem that there are other ways to address this potential issue than a blanket nonassignability term.

  • I am the owner of the domain.

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