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Aurora, image by Matthew Shire |
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Sorry about that! |
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| FTLComm - Tisdale - Monday, October 23, 2006 | ||||||
Over a week ago we discovered that the domain name "FTLCOMM.COM" was in danger. Doing a routine check of various domain names on our e-mail server, it was discovered that the grandfather domain registered in October of 1996 was on the verge of expiring. This set off alarm bells with us, as we had already had the displeasure of one of our customers actually losing a domain name due to out and out threft. Back in 1996 when Bowmar.com and Ftlcomm.com were registered, the only registering institution at the time was an American operation and in the years since then it was purchased and taken over by a huge corporation called Network Solutions. We did not want FTLComm.com to be stolen as had happened with Bowmar.com so we set to work with the renewal process but discovered a serious problem. The authorities responsible for the site had changed addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses several times in the past ten years and as a result Network Solutions had not been able to contact us about the impending expiration. When we tried to make the renewal, none of our names and contact data added up and having been involved in a number of law suits over domain names and theft in the past, Network Solutions is extremely cautious. Of the four of us who look after our respective servers and DNS data, Andrew was working on t his one and he tried to jump through all the hoops, but by Friday morning he was still one or two short. At that point, he had already spent several hours on the phone with Network Solutions and sent them two faxes, one of which included his current drivers license, but alas that just would not do for authentication. When he and I talked a few minutes after six Friday morning, the folks in the states wanted a utility bill as proof of who he was. He, like most of us, pays for utility bills online and this posed a problem, but we figured out that a Manitoba Hydro bill would do and by mid-day yet another fax was fired off and it then was up to the propogation through the Internet for service to be restored. It was not until mid Sunday that Ensign came back to life and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We know that a lot of people check on Ensign each day and will have been shocked with what they discovered Friday and Saturday. Even though we tried to avert the problem we did not dodge the bullet but we are back in business now. |
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