Good question. The primary site is a .org and the registrar is down in the US. I'm not worried about them disappearing on me. The .ca domain is just for completeness (CNAME) - everything is branded with .org. If I lost resolution on that name I probably wouldn't notice until I read it in the news or someone told me.
What happens when a registrar fails? What follows is guesswork and supposition: In my case Netfirms is acting as a proxy. If they disappeared and turned their DNS servers off I think I'd wind up with NXDOMAIN. *** Experiment time *** I think I need setup a DNS infrastructure and then remove the name server for part of it and see what the client gets - never tried this. The fun bit would be trying to re-register with another registrar. The CIRA presumably keeps a database of names/expiration-dates/etc outside of the DNS resolution infrastructure itself. In that scenario I'd have to pay again, convince the new registrar & CIRA that I'm the legitimate owner and have CIRA change registrar info to the new guys. On Fri, 2009-01-23 at 00:34 -0600, [email protected] wrote: > At such low margins, what happens when your registrar goes belly up? > [I'm actually curious about the mechanics of that...] > > I go with zid.com. They charge me $23/year, and they have supplemental > business, so I'm fairly confident that they will be in business for a > long time... > > But even then, their web interface is sometimes lacking (ex. last I > checked, they don't provide me with way to specify more than two name > servers... I have to request that by email :(. > > m@ > > On Fri, 23 Jan 2009, John Jardine wrote: > > > Thanks - I ended up going with netfirms.ca - 10.45 after tax. Now I > > just need to alias the entry across to the real site (hosted on site5). > > > > > > On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 23:10 -0700, William Astle wrote: > >> John Jardine wrote: > >>> I know some of you set up web sites on a regular basis. I do 1 every > >>> couple of years so this kinda surprised me: Domain names with U.S. > >>> registrars are CHEAP compared to Canadian registrars. I paid US$9/yr > >>> for .com & .org. The cheapest I've found so far for .ca is CAD$10/yr - > >>> but alot of sites are charging $30 to $50. What's behind the high > >>> registration prices? > >> > >> <puts on CIRA certified registrar hat> > >> > >> CIRA currently charges C$8.50/domain/year to registrars. Registrars also > >> pay a fixed $1000/year for CIRA certification so that $1000 has to be > >> amortized over all domain registrations handled by that registrar each > >> year. > >> > >> When you add in the transaction costs for processing credit cards, an > >> amount to operational overhead (servers, etc.), and an amount for > >> profit, you end up with a price that's about 50% to 75% above the rate > >> from CIRA. > >> > >> Note that the cost of developing a web site interface to handle the > >> registrations has to be paid for from that profit amount, too. And, > >> believe me, it is *not* cheap to develop a site to handle .ca > >> registrations. (If you hired a web development company to do it, it > >> would be anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 or higher, depending on the > >> features implemented.) > >> > >> The other factor in the equation is volume. As volume goes up, the cost > >> per transaction on credit cards goes down. Also, the basically fixed > >> costs of running the registry amortize over a much larger number of > >> registrations so the registry can reduce the fees. (CIRA as done so over > >> the years - the original fee to registrars was $20/domain/year.) Many of > >> the .com/.org registrars do a substantially higher volume of > >> registrations (due to .com) than .ca registrars meaning they get a much > >> better economy of scale going for them. > >> > >> Basically, if you find a .ca registrar charging less than around $10, > >> they're losing money on the proposition once you add in the transaction > >> fees and other overhead. > >> > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > clug-talk mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > > **Please remove these lines when replying > > > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
