It seems Register.com, and the domains it serves are all unavailable at the time of posting.

Wondering why some domains which had been working earlier, stopped resolving all of a sudden, I assumed it was my local DNS server, but not so. Take www.register.com itself (similar results obtained for any domains I know have DNS hosted by Register.com). Root servers are reporting ns1/2/3/4 serve register.com. I’d locally cached IPs for these servers, and all lead to the same trace. So much for redundancy. What domain registrar / host worth their salt would have such a set up? Register.com it would seem. Astonishing!

Tracing route to ns1.register.com [216.21.234.96]
ver a maximum of 30 hops:

 1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  xnd-fw01.dublin.xennanet.com [192.168.10.1]
 2    44 ms    43 ms    44 ms  b-ras1.prp.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.26]
 3    43 ms    43 ms    42 ms  83.71.112.62
 4   109 ms   110 ms   110 ms  pos0-0.corea.hud.newyork.eircom.net [159.134.191.246]
 5   109 ms   109 ms   110 ms  12.118.100.5
 6   111 ms   112 ms   110 ms  tbr1-p013802.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.90]
 7   110 ms   110 ms   109 ms  gar5-p300.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.9]
 8   110 ms   109 ms   110 ms  mdf16-gsr12-1-pos-6-0.nyc2.attens.com [12.122.25.114]
 9   110 ms   110 ms   111 ms  mdf19-bi8k-1-eth-1-1.nyc2.attens.net [63.240.0.24]
10  63.240.5.98  reports: Destination net unreachable.

Tracing route to ns2.register.com [216.21.226.96]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  xnd-fw01.dublin.xennanet.com [192.168.10.1]
  2    43 ms   185 ms    73 ms  b-ras1.prp.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.26]
  3    42 ms    42 ms    42 ms  83.71.112.62
  4   110 ms   109 ms   110 ms  pos0-0.corea.hud.newyork.eircom.net [159.134.191.246]
  5   110 ms   110 ms   110 ms  12.118.100.5
  6   111 ms   111 ms   111 ms  tbr1-p013802.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.90]
  7   109 ms   110 ms   109 ms  gar5-p300.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.9]
  8   110 ms   109 ms   109 ms  mdf16-gsr12-1-pos-6-0.nyc2.attens.com [12.122.255.114]
  9   110 ms   110 ms   110 ms  mdf19-bi8k-1-eth-1-2.nyc2.attens.net [63.240.0.106]
 10  63.240.5.98  reports: Destination net unreachable.

Tracing route to ns3.register.com [216.21.234.97]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  xnd-fw01.dublin.xennanet.com [192.168.10.1]
  2    44 ms    44 ms    77 ms  b-ras1.prp.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.26]
  3    43 ms    43 ms    42 ms  83.71.112.58
  4   119 ms   120 ms   120 ms  pos0-0.corea.hud.newyork.eircom.net [159.134.191.246]
  5   122 ms   121 ms   120 ms  12.118.100.5
  6   122 ms   123 ms   123 ms  tbr1-p013802.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.90]
  7   122 ms   122 ms   120 ms  gar5-p300.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.9]
  8   122 ms   120 ms   122 ms  mdf16-gsr12-1-pos-6-0.nyc2.attens.com [12.122.255.114]
  9   330 ms   121 ms   122 ms  mdf19-bi8k-2-eth-2-1.nyc2.attens.net [63.240.18. 2]
 10  63.240.5.102  reports: Destination net unreachable.

Tracing route to ns4.register.com [216.21.226.97]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  xnd-fw01.dublin.xennanet.com [192.168.10.1]
  2    42 ms    45 ms    43 ms  b-ras1.prp.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.26]
  3    42 ms    42 ms    42 ms  83.71.112.58
  4   120 ms   120 ms   121 ms  pos0-0.corea.hud.newyork.eircom.net [159.134.191.246]
  5   120 ms   120 ms   121 ms  12.118.100.5
  6   122 ms   122 ms   122 ms  tbr1-p013802.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.90]
  7   122 ms   121 ms   121 ms  gar5-p300.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.3.9]
  8   121 ms   121 ms   120 ms  mdf16-gsr12-1-pos-6-0.nyc2.attens.com [12.122.255.114]
  9   121 ms   121 ms   120 ms  mdf19-bi8k-1-eth-1-2.nyc2.attens.net [63.240.0.106]
 10  63.240.5.98  reports: Destination net unreachable.

Is there anything distributed or redundant about this? Well they do use different netblocks, but what’s the point if they’re all on the same route? Correct, none whatsoever. So if you’ve hosted your domain with Register.com, not alone are you paying way over the odds, but your DNS is not hosted reliably.