Backgrounder... I've had "midiwall.com" as a domain since 1996 - with that kind of timeline, I've had a couple of hiccups aliong the way.

My most recent one started about two weeks ago, and I thought I'd post it up for all to chuckle at.



So, this chapter starts with the domain falling off the map about 2 weeks ago. Technically, it "fell out of DNS", that means that when you typed "midiwall.com" into a browser, there was nothing available in the world to translate it to a numeric address (the "IP" address). And thus, you couldn't get to the server.

A couple of days later, the server itself disappeared off the map of the world. And that's when I started to thrash a bit.

I told myself that I'd wait a week and then disregard the 7 years of loyalty to my current ISP and hop out.

I shopped for a host provider, found one, and started the process. That was Tuesday the 18th.

The guy was (is!) _GREAT_. He answered all my questions about how his servers were configured, speed, backups, etc. I started the move process...

...and hit the first snag.

I/we couldn't get to my "DNS Record". This is the paperwork that relates the text "midiwall.com" to a hosting service. Without access to that, I was sunk and wouldn't be able to move. I couldn't get to it 'cause the program to access it was on a server that... also fell out of DNS.

Plan C...

In my case (and about 6.5 million other people) those records are held in a database by a company called "TuCows". The admin from the new ISP wrote & called them as an "authoritative contact" to get them to release the record. They ignored him, so as the domain owner I called. After a bit of menu searching on the phone, I found an option that said "if your reseller cannot be contacted or you longer wish to do business with them..."

BINGO! I picked that one.

But, it said... ""all that is required to transfer your domain is a valid admin email address. Please contact a reseller from http://referrals.tucows.com and have your admin handle the details".

Yeah, well, we tried that but were ignored.

Okay... back to waiting.

So while I was waiting, I started snooping around the 'net, going through registration records and links in old emails from my ISP. I found a link to a now defunct page, but the "not found" page mentioned a network that wasn't my ISP. That seemed weird, so I started cross-referencing this new network name to my ISP. I came across a domain registration record that tied this intermediary ISP to my _old_ ISP.

WTF?

This was my first real lead as to what happened... It started to look like my old ISP had sold the service. EEEK!

I dropped an email to the new guys, crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. While I was waiting, I kept searching for more clues...I found another reference between the current and the intermediaries, and it had a phone number.

I called... and got an answering machine. Not ideal, but, it was more than I had before.

About 2 hours later,... I got a call back. HOLY CRAP! THERE'S LIFE!

I was in the lab here at work so I didn't get the call, but the intermediary owner left a message with a magic email addy. I wrote again, and... I got a reply.

CONTACT!

From here things went pretty fast. "Nathan" (the intermediary owner) was a friend of Mark's (original ISP) from long ago and he was helping him out to recover from whatever happend. Mark's in CA, Nathan's in TX so there wasn't a ton of direct info to share but the bottom line was that there was a catastrophic failure at Mark's site with the comm lines. Usually you'd fix it in a couple of days, but something was happening that made the repair an issue. Dunno what that would have been.

A side story is that Mark & Nathan had been talking about merging anyway. So, with Mark being down for who knows how long, they decided to just go ahead and do the business deal at the same time. Of course, that complicated things.

Nathan was waiting on receiving the servers from Mark, but in the meantime, he did have all the DNS records - so we could get started with the move.

Once I got into the management app, midiwall.com was back online within _seconds_. I pointed "midiwall.com" as a name to the new ISP servers, and BAM! I was up.

I headed over to the new ISP site, bought a year's subscription, and BAM! I had web space that I could get to from a browser pointing at "www.midiwall.com".

It took about 5 minutes for me to get mail working, and then another hour or so for security to come through to support file transfers and a couple of other things.

whew!

So, as it stands now, I have email, web and file transfer capability. The intermediary ISP is being WAY cool and has offered to do whatever I want to be able to get my data to me once he gets it. That could be a ZIP file on a DVD (there's a LOT), or just letting me transfer it electronically from his machine to my new one.

I figure that should happen in another week or so.


And.. that's the present chapter of midiwall.com.


fwiw, the new "way cool ISP/host" is Dimension Servers. Highly recommended.

 

yay, i keep wanting to go to your site and read something or go to a link... buts its never there

 

That's great news that you didn't lose everything! yay