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QuirksMode outage

The QuirksMode.org DNS entry did not work for about 55 hours, from Sunday 27th around 15:00 to midnight on Wednesday 30th. This is by far the longest time my site has ever been offline since it started (under a different name) in 1998. I’m not happy about it, but the matter was beyond my control.

What seems to have happened (Dutch) is that my ISP’s mother company, former monopolist KPN, did not pay its bills to Network Solutions for the .com, .org, and .net domain registrations, among which QuirksMode.org. (Reading between the lines of the linked article I’d say the administrative error is KPN’s, and not XS4ALL’s, which is my actual provider.)

The bill was paid on Monday, and Network Solutions threw the switch again and restored DNS records for the affected domains — except that something went wrong. Only a minority of DNS records were restored, the rest remained stubbornly pointing to a holding page. QuirksMode.org was in that last batch. Network Solutions needed another day or so to fix this technical mistake of theirs, and the correct DNS records are finally being distributed as I write this.

For the record, XS4ALL, my ISP, is — so far — easily the best in the Netherlands, and I always refer anyone looking for a good ISP to them. (They’re not the cheapest, by the way. But it’s worth the little extra.) So far, this outage has not destroyed my faith in them, though I’ll be extra attentive for the next few months. They have an actual help desk, that, you know, actually helps you when you have a problem — even if that problem involves DHCP settings on a Sunday night. That’s seriously cool. And this outage was far worse than all other problems I’ve ever had with them combined. And I’ve been with them since 1996.

I trust this unpleasant episode is now done and dusted.