[CLUE-Tech] Domain Name Renewal

[Charles Oriez]

At 11:06 PM 11/16/01 -0700, Jeffery Cann wrote:

>Okay.  I asked this question last year, but was unable to use third parties
>sucessfully to renew my domain names.  I think it was too close after
>Internic was forced to allow competition.  Nevertheless, can folks suggest
>domain registrar services that they have actually used.  I am looking for
>cheap as possible, but actual results.
>
>TIA
>Jeff


I have used http://www.gandi.net in France to renew my oriez.org domain as 
well as several other domains, including denveraitp.org.

1) Transfer from NS was simple, since I am the listed admin and billing 
contact for my domain.  I had to set up a gandi nick for myself the first 
time, which was easy, and a gandi nick for the tech contact in one case, 
which was also simple.  In transferring a domain which was hosted on 
invite.net, I didn't even need to set up the tech nick, since they already 
had one.  Same was true in transferring a pair.com hosted domain.  It took 
about two weeks for the entire process to complete, mostly due to slowness 
in NS processing, but every domain contact is given 5 days to confirm or 
reject the transfer (so make sure your ISP knows what you're doing if they 
are the tech contact).  If all of your contacts actively approve the 
transfer rather than remaining silent, the transfer happens faster.  If any 
of them reject it, the transfer fails.

2) Cost was low.  NS charges $35 per year.  Gandi charges 12 Euros per year 
(about $10.40 or so when I did my most recent transfer in September).

3) Time period is better.  NS pushes their 2 year contract.  I've heard you 
could do longer with them, but I couldn't find doc anywhere.  With Gandi, 
you do the initial transfer for one year, but as soon as that is 
accomplished you can go in and extend the registration up to 10 years total.

4) Spam is non existent.  Gandi asserts that harvesting email addresses 
from their database violates French privacy law (Do a whois on oriez.org to 
see what they say).  I used a unique address for my contact addresses on 
their database.  I've received little if any spam to that address, and no 
spam at all directly from gandi.  By comparison, NS spam to my contact 
addresses when I was with them was so prolific at times that I had to put 
them in my procmail filters, and MAPS threatened to RBL them.

Definitely worth the effort.

Heads up though - Network Solutions doesn't like to take no for an 
answer.  Even after the transfer was complete, NS tried to invoice me for 
domain renewal.  I finally sent them a dispute letter once telling them to 
knock off the bogus invoices.  Also, make sure you do the transfer process 
before the expire date on the domain.  Starting the transfer after 
expiration causes a lockup condition on NS.







Charles Oriez     coriez at oriez.org
39  34' 34.4"N / 105 00' 06.3"W
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