Authoritative Nameserver Connectivity Issues

It would appear that my authoritative nameservers are currently AWOL and have been for at least several hours already. All access to my domain web/email services is therefore being lost once any cached DNS data is deemed to have expired

I was just about to change them to elsewhere ... but is this even possible under the circumstances and/or is trying to tweak things at this time virtually guaranteed to make matters significantly worse rather than better !

Current domain registrar & authoritative nameservers: 123-reg [grrrrr :angry: ]

I was about to change them to cloudflare as I already have an account and I'm using their nameservers for another domain.

I *may* see a (no doubt somewhat useless) response to my 123-reg ticket in several days and the alleged 3-minute wait for a chat has now been the best part of an hour with not even the merest hint of chat going on :rolleyes:



Does anyone fancy sticking their neck out sufficiently far enough to suggest best tactics for dealing with the current (lack-of) nameserver issues before everything everywhere goes distinctly t*ts-up ?



Edited To Add

Current authoritative nameservers are ns25.domaincontrol.com & ns26.domaincontrol.com if anyone wants to check connectivity via a non-BT/PN network

Edited by ambrougham (Sat 15-Feb-25 11:45:17)

I can ping them, but this is via BT wholesale. They are at least alive, but whether they are nameserving, let alone authoritatively, I can't tell. As you say they are AWOL, I think I am doing better than you. I suggest you try a traceroute.

They have ipv6 addresses 2603:5:2161: : d and 2603:5:2261: : d if that helps. Ah, just found ipv4: 97.74.102.13 and 173.201.70.13.

Excuse the extra spaces in the ipv6's, because : d is a smiley

Oooo, thanks, that's very interesting

All I've been getting for both nameservers since circa 0500 hours today is:

Pinging ns25.domaincontrol.com [97.74.102.13] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 97.74.102.13:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

Tracing route to ns25.domaincontrol.com [97.74.102.13]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms redacted [192.168.1.1]
2 8 ms 8 ms 11 ms 254.core.plus.net [195.166.130.254]
3 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms 213.120.163.4
4 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 217.32.240.93
5 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 213.121.192.132
6 9 ms 10 ms 10 ms peer7-et-4-1-5.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.16.142]
7 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 166-49-214-194.gia.bt.net [166.49.214.194]
8 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms ldn-b3-link.ip.twelve99.net [213.248.71.146]
9 10 ms * * ldn-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.140.70]
10 15 ms 14 ms 15 ms adm-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.137.235]
11 14 ms 18 ms 14 ms adm-b10-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.138.251]
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

I therefore have no access whatsoever to my domain site/email when using BT/PN DNS because, presumably, the cached DNS data has expired and the authoritative server is not contactable. However, when using cloudflare/google/open-dns everything seems to be (mostly) working as expected ... at the mo at least anyway.

Maybe it's more of a BT/PN routing issue than a nameserver issue per se?

Curiouser and curiouser said Alice ...

Edited by ambrougham (Sat 15-Feb-25 12:26:17)

traceroute to 97.74.102.13 (97.74.102.13), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 <snip> 0.499 ms 0.496 ms 0.445 ms
2 lns1-td1.mcr.veloxserv.net (195.191.219.17) 9.291 ms 9.276 ms 9.364 ms
3 100.69.165.58 (100.69.165.58) 9.287 ms 9.266 ms 9.569 ms
4 ae7-210.cr1-man1.ip4.gtt.net (212.222.7.93) 9.504 ms 9.492 ms 9.654 ms
5 ae15.cr11-lon1.ip4.gtt.net (89.149.187.109) 14.851 ms 14.839 ms 14.875 ms
6 195.219.23.64 (195.219.23.64) 15.071 ms 15.065 ms *
7 if-ae-65-2.tcore2.ldn-london.as6453.net (80.231.20.16) 20.124 ms 20.018 ms 20.012 ms
8 if-bundle-67-2.qcore2.ldn-london.as6453.net (195.219.16.128) 20.471 ms 20.491 ms 20.400 ms
9 if-bundle-51-2.qcore5.ldn-london.as6453.net (195.219.16.137) 19.715 ms 19.678 ms 19.699 ms
10 if-bundle-8-2.qcore2.av2-amsterdam.as6453.net (195.219.136.118) 19.384 ms 19.353 ms 19.388 ms
11 if-bundle-2-2.qcore1.av2-amsterdam.as6453.net (195.219.194.96) 20.217 ms 20.223 ms if-ae-67-2.tcore2.av2-amsterdam.as6453.net (195.219.136.115) 20.663 ms
12 if-ae-2-2.tcore1.av2-amsterdam.as6453.net (195.219.194.5) 19.829 ms if-ae-66-2.tcore1.av2-amsterdam.as6453.net (195.219.136.106) 19.851 ms if-ae-2-2.tcore1.av2-amsterdam.as6453.net (195.219.194.5) 19.809 ms
13 195.219.194.221 (195.219.194.221) 20.376 ms 20.336 ms 20.361 ms
14 241.149.109.208.host.secureserver.net (208.109.149.241) 20.687 ms 243.149.109.208.host.secureserver.net (208.109.149.243) 20.519 ms 20.538 ms
15 ns25.domaincontrol.com (97.74.102.13) 20.169 ms 245.149.109.208.host.secureserver.net (208.109.149.245) 20.579 ms 20.542 ms

One for your ISP, I think.

Edited by DFScale (Sat 15-Feb-25 13:55:11)

OK, the connectivity issue has apparently resolved itself as if by magic :rolleyes:

Pinging ns25.domaincontrol.com [97.74.102.13] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 97.74.102.13: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=51
Reply from 97.74.102.13: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=51
Reply from 97.74.102.13: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=51
Reply from 97.74.102.13: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=51

Ping statistics for 97.74.102.13:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 16ms, Maximum = 16ms, Average = 16ms



Tracing route to ns25.domaincontrol.com [97.74.102.13]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms router-adsl [192.168.1.1]
2 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 254.core.plus.net [195.166.130.254]
3 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 213.120.163.4
4 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 217.32.240.93
5 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms 213.121.192.132
6 16 ms 9 ms 10 ms peer7-et-4-1-5.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.16.142]
7 10 ms 11 ms 9 ms 166-49-214-194.gia.bt.net [166.49.214.194]
8 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms ldn-b3-link.ip.twelve99.net [213.248.71.146]
9 * 9 ms * ldn-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.140.70]
10 15 ms * * adm-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.137.235]
11 15 ms 14 ms 15 ms adm-b10-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.138.251]
12 16 ms 16 ms 17 ms ae0-u613.ams3-cr-oberon.bb.gdinf.net [62.115.156.203]
13 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms 243.149.109.208.host.secureserver.net [208.109.149.243]
14 16 ms 16 ms 20 ms ns25.domaincontrol.com [97.74.102.13]

Trace complete.

After circa 2 hours of 123-reg ignoring a chat session with an alleged wait time of 3 minutes, they suddenly appear to say it's a BT issue and nothing whatsoever to do with them !

I'll now be changing authoritative nameservers very shortly as part of the ongoing much longer plan to get everything away from 123-reg ASAP. They're a complete bl**dy nightmare now. Especially with the continuing move to a godaddy-style system/service and all the associated network loading issues and changes various.

The sooner I'm finally out the better. But, unfortunately, I got myself screwed over and tied into several lengthy contracts for services. Services that were seriously tweaked and downgraded from what was actually purchased shortly after banking full payment It kinda means that there has to be a carefully planned exit over a period of time due to how 123-reg managed to manipulate renewal dates and so on to presumably make life difficult and deter customers from leaving immediately. Just walking away at any point in time effectively means paying again for several years of services already paid for etc. apart from anything else.

Thanks for the replies various

I can't see the 'problem' being down to BT/PN. It's either 123-reg fiddling around with their servers again (as I suspect it is) or a routing issue at twelve99.

Just compare the before and after tracerts. The issue starts at hop 12 so nowhere near BT/PN but very close to whoever 123-reg are actually using for their alleged EU hosting servers. There were also similar issues with the 123-reg mail servers recently and various breaks reported by 3rd party website monitoring services. My sites have been up and down more often than a ... and I'm sure everyone knows the rest of that one

It's all very much a déjà vu moment and has happened before when 123-reg were making network or data centre changes as part of the alleged 'upgrades' to a godaddy-style system. They're currently forcing all the TSOhost customers into 123-reg as well so I would strongly suspect it's network or data centre changes as part of that migration. Needless to say, no shortage of unhappy TSOhost customers it would appear.

Realtime confirmation of service outage available HERE with an archived copy of the chart also available HERE

Edited by ambrougham (Sat 15-Feb-25 19:40:04)