My Versin Saga
I've been attempting to do something seemingly very simple at the control panel for one of my domains, wpcp.org over at netsol.com for several weeks now. Quite simply, I want to turn their BS web forwarding service up and flip my own DNS on in there. So, I enter my primary and secondary servers “ns.cps.k12.il.us” and “ns1.illinois.net”, respectively. The site shoots back and tells me their invalid.
After me and several other people trying this for a couple of weeks, on 9/22 I phone Netsol and reach someone who expectedly knows nothing about DNS or anything like that. So, we try resetting internet explorer on my end, even rebooted a machine (beats me why). I still get the error. She several times tries to enter my nameservers in various orders and capitalizations, and finds that she gets the same message too. So, this woman tells me she'll have to escalate my ticket to “engineering”, and they'll fix it within 3 - 5 days.
7 days later, 5 business days, I'm in the same spot. So, I call up, and reach a gentleman who offers to query his database for the status on my ticket. He can't keep his story right based on what his database says. First he tells me that “engineering” will have to enter my nameservers manually. He quickly forgets this theory and tells me engineering has not opened the ticket since it was created 9/22. I remind him that this is five business days ago. He then decides to “re-escalate” my ticket. After I explained the importance of this getting fixed, the customer service rep promises me that engineering will look at it in 24 - 48 hours. I'm a pessimist, so I'll post more around this time on Wednesday (giving “engineering” a full 48 hours). Note, I am actually waiting a major project on getting this fixed. I need my own MX records to do email.
I figured that the usual bout of engineers who forgot to allow for us wacky people with stuff like “cps.k12.il.us” as our domain name in their regex work for verisin. So, I just didn't enter ns.cps.k12.il.us, and just plopped in ns1.illinois.net. Site still won't take it. Moral of this story (aside from why VeriSign is VeriSin in my book) is: anyone who regex's email or domain names or otherwise parses them, please don't forget about the governmental sorts with bureaucratically long domain names (i.e. payton.cps.k12.il.us).