Hi,

I use Google for Apps to manage the email for my domain (say - example.com).

Everything works fine (registered, set appropriate MX etc.) except that the custom URLs to access the services (ie. mail.example.com instead of mail.google.com/a/example.com) sometimes work, and sometimes not.

Precisely: there are environements (at work for instance) where I can type mail.example.com and it gets resolved correctly (and the appropriate mail page opens) and others (at home for instance) where the customized URL is not recognized. The enviroments where it works and where it does not work are roughly 50/50% (I tested about 20-30 worldwide when travelling). This happens on different and unrelated clients and OSes.

General name resolution (in all environemnts) for anything else works fine (eg. cnn.com or others are always correctly resolved).

Other sites (not pointing to google for apps) registered in example.com are resolved correctly.

My domain is registered at xname.org.

Frankly, I am clueless. The fact that this behaviour is consistant (in some places it works, in some other not) and that general resolution is correct makes me wonder if resolvers on the way (form my client to the Google DNS) are not limited by the convoluted way customized URLs are finally turned into the actual mail.google.com/a/... URLs.

This is not a critical issue as it impacts only the address to type into the web browser but it is a curious problem on its own.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Wojtek

When were the changes made? Perhaps some of the changes have not propigated throughout the DNS network.

The key is your DNS-provider. I'm recomend to use FreeDns.ws .
http://freedns.ws/en/gmail/