3 ms·

Moving your own self-hosted stuff around different hosting providers is easy and doesn't interrupt the service, at least not for long. Just open an account at a

Moving your own self-hosted stuff around different hosting providers is easy and doesn't interrupt the service, at least not for long. Just open an account at a new hosting provider. Fire up, your backup, changing DNS and you are up and running.

jlokier 6y ago
This is great until your DNS account is blocked at the registrar for similarly opaque reasons.
- hundchenkatze 6y ago
  Couldn't you just switch registrars?
  - jlokier 6y ago
    It can be difficult if the old registrar won't cooperate. Especially if you registered under a pseudonym, as then you can't prove legal ownership of the domain either. But even if you register under your real name, you may need a court case to compel transfer if the old registrar won't cooperate.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  At some point, there are risks you can't realistically control. There will always be extremely unlikely but theoretically possible catastrophic outcomes. Working DNS is great until global thermonuclear war or a supervolcano erupting renders the Internet rather irrelevant, for example. A sensible policy is to look at the risks you can do something about, try to assess how likely each threat is and what damage it would cause if it actually happened, and then make your plans taking into account how much you want to control those risks and what it costs you to do so. On this scale, something like the total collapse of law and order or the failure of the core infrastructure of the modern Internet and its governance processes is obviously less likely than one commercial service provider pulling the plug on unspecified or unreasonable grounds.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    I think highlighting risks in systems we might eventually change, but can't change yet, is also part of sensible policy. We're not going to change the DNS registrar system overnight. But by drawing attention to the issue, we might, eventually, make it a bit more robust with regards to things like registrars becoming unresponsive to small players, or losing data. For example if people could register with two or three independent registrars in order to have robust control and ownership in the event any one registrar fails them, that might help as a technical solution for robustness. No doubt there are other non-technical things that may help as well. Separate from changing DNS, I think it's sensible to recognise that risks with cloud hosting or using SaaS, as happened to OP with their GitHub account, also exist with DNS, so for anyone who would find that a problem, they should evaluate whether relying on a single domain, or even on DNS itself, is the right thing to do. For example, high-value IoT devices in the field that can't be updated easily might look for their server at more than one DNS name, and specifically on separate domains (not subdomains) held by distinct registrars, and validate the server's identity. Or they might keep track of IP addresses that have worked recently (in addition to DNS) and fall back to those. (I have worked on devices where this was helpful because DNS on some deployed sites turned out to be unreliable.)
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      I don't disagree, but I think it's fair to say that the risk of some random DNS-related dispute causing a problem where your registrar cuts you off is much lower than the risk of some random SAAS you depend on pulling a fast one. The culture and economics behind a lot of tech SAASes that we talk about here all the time make them inherently vulnerable to discarding or abusing users, even those who have been with them a long time and maybe paid them quite a lot of money, in the name of the almighty growth curve. The incentives there are not necessarily aligned with supporting even long-standing and loyal users. In contrast, there is little to gain for a DNS provider to screw a paying customer or get embroiled in some tedious arguments about rights to some domain name. They can't entirely avoid that because of the environment they operate in, but they are generally going to make the most money when they have lots of happy customers who can briefly engage with the provider's almost entirely automated systems and pay some registration fees for the privilege through another almost entirely automated system and then everyone can get on with their day happy with the trade.

jlokier 6y ago

This is great until your DNS account is blocked at the registrar for similarly opaque reasons.

hundchenkatze 6y ago
Couldn't you just switch registrars?
- jlokier 6y ago
  It can be difficult if the old registrar won't cooperate. Especially if you registered under a pseudonym, as then you can't prove legal ownership of the domain either. But even if you register under your real name, you may need a court case to compel transfer if the old registrar won't cooperate.
Silhouette 6y ago
At some point, there are risks you can't realistically control. There will always be extremely unlikely but theoretically possible catastrophic outcomes. Working DNS is great until global thermonuclear war or a supervolcano erupting renders the Internet rather irrelevant, for example. A sensible policy is to look at the risks you can do something about, try to assess how likely each threat is and what damage it would cause if it actually happened, and then make your plans taking into account how much you want to control those risks and what it costs you to do so. On this scale, something like the total collapse of law and order or the failure of the core infrastructure of the modern Internet and its governance processes is obviously less likely than one commercial service provider pulling the plug on unspecified or unreasonable grounds.
- jlokier 6y ago
  I think highlighting risks in systems we might eventually change, but can't change yet, is also part of sensible policy. We're not going to change the DNS registrar system overnight. But by drawing attention to the issue, we might, eventually, make it a bit more robust with regards to things like registrars becoming unresponsive to small players, or losing data. For example if people could register with two or three independent registrars in order to have robust control and ownership in the event any one registrar fails them, that might help as a technical solution for robustness. No doubt there are other non-technical things that may help as well. Separate from changing DNS, I think it's sensible to recognise that risks with cloud hosting or using SaaS, as happened to OP with their GitHub account, also exist with DNS, so for anyone who would find that a problem, they should evaluate whether relying on a single domain, or even on DNS itself, is the right thing to do. For example, high-value IoT devices in the field that can't be updated easily might look for their server at more than one DNS name, and specifically on separate domains (not subdomains) held by distinct registrars, and validate the server's identity. Or they might keep track of IP addresses that have worked recently (in addition to DNS) and fall back to those. (I have worked on devices where this was helpful because DNS on some deployed sites turned out to be unreliable.)
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    I don't disagree, but I think it's fair to say that the risk of some random DNS-related dispute causing a problem where your registrar cuts you off is much lower than the risk of some random SAAS you depend on pulling a fast one. The culture and economics behind a lot of tech SAASes that we talk about here all the time make them inherently vulnerable to discarding or abusing users, even those who have been with them a long time and maybe paid them quite a lot of money, in the name of the almighty growth curve. The incentives there are not necessarily aligned with supporting even long-standing and loyal users. In contrast, there is little to gain for a DNS provider to screw a paying customer or get embroiled in some tedious arguments about rights to some domain name. They can't entirely avoid that because of the environment they operate in, but they are generally going to make the most money when they have lots of happy customers who can briefly engage with the provider's almost entirely automated systems and pay some registration fees for the privilege through another almost entirely automated system and then everyone can get on with their day happy with the trade.