Shiny new name servers for Itomic: ns1/ns2.itomicdns.com

April 17, 2014

Ross Ross Gerring

As part of our never ending efforts to raise the bar in everything we do (it’s a journey, not a destination), we’ve recently fired up new dedicated name servers:

ns1.itomicdns.com
ns2.itomicdns.com

Here are the ageing and soon-to-be-turned-off name servers:

ns1.itomic.com
ns2.itomic.com

What’s a name server you ask? Here’s a brief answer from our own glossary service: https://www.itomic.com.au/services/hosting/

Or if you prefer more meat on the bones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_server

The target date for turning off our old name servers is April 30th 2014. We are in the final stages of getting all the users of our old name servers to update (‘redelegate’) their domain names point to our new name servers – which is proving more challenging than we expected! Something to do with the 80/20 rule.

What happens if your domain is using name servers that get turned off? At a minimum, your website disappears. Not good at all. Quite likely your email goes bye-bye too. Terrible!

How do you redelegate a domain name? Answer: via the control panel provided by your domain registrar, whoever that might be.

CAUTION: Be careful! Don’t go changing name servers for your domain unless you’re 100% certain the information you have is correct. If in doubt – get professional help. Itomic perhaps? 🙂

How do you know who your domain registrar is? You need a ‘whois’ tool. Here’s one in use for Itomic (replace your domain name accordingly):

http://whois.domaintools.com/itomic.com.au

Amongst other things, the above report tells us:

Registrar Name: TPP Internet
Name Server: ns1.itomicdns.com
Name Server: ns2.itomicdns.com

So our name server information is exactly what it needs to be, and we now know our registrar is TPP Internet. But if the name server info (or indeed any other info on that ‘whois’ report) needs to be updated, then it’s time to visit our registrar. Google is your friend. Look for some sort of opportunity to login to manage your domain(s). Don’t know your account username and password? Your registrar will almost certainly have a “forgotten password?” feature. Failing that, your last resort might be to directly email or call the customer support service of your registrar.

OK, so you’re logged into the control or management panel of your registrar. Now what? You’re likely to see a list of one or more domain names. Click on the one you want to change, then look for some opportunity to edit or redelegate or update the name server information. Some (old school!) registrars require you to enter an IP address associated with each name server. Try this service http://ping.eu/ping/ to find out the IP address for each of your name servers. So, for example, we can find out that the IP address of ns1.itomicdns.com is 110.232.112.28.

Don’t forget to press “Save” when you’ve made your changes….. and you’re done!

p.s. Name server updates might take anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours to take effect as the new information propagates itself.