DNS

[brothersterno.livejournal.com]

I have no idea why it's difficult for people to understand how DNS works.

As near as I can tell, the standard FAQ that these people read is something like this:

Step 1) Register name
Step 2) ????
Step 3) PROFIT!

And when they don't get to step three because names only resolve if you tell the internet where to resolve them they get frustrated because this is complex.

Comments

[darkrose.livejournal.com]

Tell them DNS is a translation service. It translates words into numbers, because the internet doesn't understand words, but humans understand words better than numbers.

As to why they have to tell it where to resolve to, tell them that you have let the internet know where to send the traffic. It's the same as entering your address in at Amazon.com so they can ship your order. Amazon has no idea who you are and where you live, so you have to tell them.

/I had to explain dns last weekend to my dad.
//he understood what I was saying when I said the above.

[brothersterno.livejournal.com]

Added wrinkle: I'm talking to tier 1 reps who should know how this works.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

The /best/ part is when you have to support a "webhost / web design firm" that "runs" their own DNS. And they haven't the foggiest idea how it works, what a root server is, how to troubleshoot it, you name it. And they've spread their own critical business services out on a series of 20+ different domains (for no apparent reason - just because they had them) on 5+ different registrars, using all different accounts and email addresses, many of which are now dysfunctional.

"Why doesn't x.y.com work?!?!?! OMG YOUR SERVER ISN'T DOING THE DNS!!!" No, dipshit, it isn't working because one or more of your fucking domains is expired. And had you listened any of the thirty times I explained to you how to start from the root servers and move down when troubleshooting DNS, you'd have figured that out soon enough.

[photosinensis.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, my customers usually don't have a problem with DNS. They still don't know how to change their nameservers.

What's more, I see so many fugly BANS and WordPress sites each day hawking get rich quick schemes that will never work, as well as a bunch of people who are setting up some pointless business thinking they'll get rich on it. The whole time I'm dealing with these customers, I'm thinking to myself, "1997 called. They want their business model back."

And don't even get me started with people who paid $0.01 for their site three days ago, registered the domain name through GoDaddy, and are now telling me that they're loosing millions of dollars for each second that their site is down because they hit their process limit--and are blaming the servers for their own stupidity. We also won't talk about tickets with the subject line "URGENT!!!111!"--and then it turns out that the customer only wants to know something that's in the frickin' FAQ.

[brothersterno.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad that I'm dealing with "mail server does not get mail for domain" rather than "I'm losing thousands of dollars every minute this dialup account is down"

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

You got THAT right! I don't miss it a bit...

[jasoncrowley.livejournal.com]

Oh the memories, how I wish I could use chlorine on them.

[jayphi77.livejournal.com]

underpants gnomes ROCK!

[hasimir.livejournal.com]

It's funny you should mention this ... just this week I finally finished working for $LARGE_AUSTRALIAN_REGISTRAR and I certainly feel your pain.

Especially when a customer's IT consultant would call because they had just updated an A record and didn't realise that said customer's ISP's nameservers would still be caching the previous records. Even more so when I had to explain that, no, actually we couldn't flush the cache of servers belonging to other companies, that's why it's called propagation.

If you're a real DNS freak, like me, you might get a kick out of this little thing (http://www.adversary.org/DNgenesiS.html), though.