Horrors of Domain Management on the Internet
The “Domain Name System” (DNS) is essentially the phone book of the Internet. It’s what translates human readable domain names like “summersault.com” into computer-friendly numeric addresses that identify where a particular website, e-mail account, or other service related to that domain actually lives. Like most of the rest of the Internet’s technologies and supporting systems, the DNS system was not designed for level or type of usage it currently experiences. Over time and through some poor policy decision making, the DNS infrastructure has become, in the context of what constitutes a reasonable quality of operations given modern expectations about network technologies, essentially broken. In recent years, as commercialization of the Internet continues and more and more services become available, DNS has become broken in new and painful ways that have a daily impact on our operations as a hosting company. Even if you’re a casual user, the dysfunction probably affects your own use of the Internet more than you know.
It seems safe to say that anywhere from 25% to 50% of the technical support requests we handle are related to clients who have a question or problem related to the management of their domain. Further, the average technical support request tends to take around one or two rounds of replies to resolve the issue. Questions related to DNS tend to take at least four or five rounds, and often require significantly more time on our part - researching issues, sitting on hold, contacting third-party support staff, etc. And the kinds of problems one can have with domains seems unimaginably diverse: It’s expired. It’s about to expire, and I can’t renew it. I can’t find the login information. The contact information is wrong. I’m trying to change the contact information but I can’t. I’m trying to transfer it to another registrar but I can’t. I got confused and accidentally changed the configuration and now my website and e-mail are broken. When I visit the website at home one thing happens, but when I visit it at the office, another thing happens. A guy named Dee N. Ess broke my leg and stole my car. And so on and so forth.
As you can imagine, this has a very real effect on our clients, and their perception of the value of a website for their organization, the quality of our support services, and perhaps the worthwhileness of using the Internet at all. It certainly makes me question those things! We’ve had clients experience outages in their e-mail and website, waste significant time trying to understand a system that is poorly documented and often painfully hard to use, and sometimes lose control or ownership of their domain altogether. Such incidents can make it hard for them to see the benefits purportedly promised by the online revolution.
In most cases, believe it or not, this isn’t anyone’s fault in particular - it just comes back to the fact that DNS wasn’t designed to do what it’s being asked to do, and trying to get all of the interested parties together about redesigning it is like trying to get a pack of wild monkeys to sing together in tune when there’s a sale on ripe bananas a few doors down. But that said, most of the registrars - the organizations responsible for facilitating the acquisition and management of domains and related DNS services - are not doing such a stellar job making this a reasonable process for your average user. We’ve partnered up with the registrar that seems to be doing the best job these days, GoDaddy, and I often still find their ordering process and domain management interface to be an exercise in self-torture.
What to do?
1) I’ve already mentioned that the system as a whole needs an overhaul, but unfortunately one does not just overhaul anything on a global network with millions of nodes. That’s not an excuse not to try, and policy-making bodies like ICANN exist for the purpose of considering long term responsible management of the Internet address space. They should be working these kinds of things out, but one often hears about how their political hang-ups and bureaucratic battling might be hampering that.
2) My sense is that the decentralization of the registrar process has helped bring down the tangible costs of registering a domain name, but it has made just about every other part of the process more expensive (negating those initial savings), if only in the ways I mentioned above (additional technical support time, more errors and ownership conflicts, user frustration, etc.) These problems are compounded by negligent registrars that need to be held much more accountable. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest going back to the days of Network Solutions managing the whole ball of wax, but I would think that a return to the spirit of those days is what’s in order: oversight organizations that exist for the good of the user community and the purpose of keeping things organized, instead of for the purpose of trying to make sure everyone can make a buck.
3) User education is pretty key here. I think most registrars currently set the bar way too high when it comes to what they expect their users to understand and remember. (That’s not to say that the bar should be set lower, but the philosophical conversation about whether the carrot comes to you or you go to the carrot is beyond the scope of this writing.) If our clients, who I consider to be above average, can register a domain and then toss away any recollection of their username, password, the company they gave their credit card to!!, and when and why it might need to be renewed, then the registrar has missed an opportunity to say what I often feel like screaming, “IF YOU DO BUSINESS ONLINE AND YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR WEBSITE AND E-MAIL, TREAT THIS INFORMATION LIKE YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE” and keep it in a safe place.
4) Even users who try to keep their information in order could use a little help from some interface design improvements on most registrar websites. The terminology and processes for doing even the most simple operations seems to change weekly, the requirements for authenticating a certain action are never clear, and most transactions involve some ridiculous combination of filling out online forms, receiving and reading e-mails with embedded links, calling for authorization codes, and sitting on hold with support. We all know that it doesn’t have to be that hard.
It’s hard to imagine sweeping improvements coming in to save the day and make domain management easier, but fortunately the Internet is still mostly controlled (at some level) but people who would like to see things whipped into shape, so there’s hope yet. Any changes toward a more consistent and simplified user experience will be welcomed by our clients, and those who provide them with technical support.
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