Expired Domain snafu

[Satin Knights]

I got the same "domain expired" web page that others were seeing. It surprised me too. Since I used to work at an ISP, I did some professional digging.

A) The "expired domain" page looked like it was coming from NetworkSolutions.com.
B) Your registrar is Register.com.
C) The full DNS chain is now working correctly from the gtld-servers.com on down to your hosting ISP.

So, it *looks* like Network Solutions had a snafu and stole your domain away from Register.com for a bit. But, since you are not a paying customer of theirs, they threw up the "expired domain" page, trying to get you to renew the domain.

But, sometime later, they noticed their mistake before you did, then flushed out their changes and restored things back to normal. But, since DNS is cached, and the domain has a 3600 second timeout set on it, the ISP to router to PC caching could lead to a three hour wave of propagation of the bad data before it was flushed out. Some ISPs hold the data longer that the value listed in the DNS header, so it may take longer for their customers to flush the bad data.

Things appear to be working fine now and for most browsers a CTRL-F5 is enough to flush caches and force a refresh of the data chain.

Short answer: Temporary glitch out of your control that will flush out and disappear in hours.

 

[Morrus]

Yup. It seems to be fixing itself.

It's also incredibly embarrassing. They made it look like my mistake, and many people think that.

 

[Satin Knights]

Oh, it was definitely their fault. The good thing is they found it and fixed it themselves quickly. I have seen this where someone had to go through lawyers faxing them affidavits in order to get the problem fixed days later.

 

[Rbledsaw]

It happens. Happened to a domain of mine a few months ago when it was set to renew on an expired debit card. It didn't help that the domain host didn't notify me that the payment had not gone through.