We host about 40 websites, mostly personal, some for some local small businesses (our clients.) Our previous ISP was microwave based, decently priced, nice speed. However they had too many problems. We can't afford a T1 - the final mile kills us in cost. So we went with Comcast business. For under $100 we get fast speeds up and down, 5 ip's, yada yada yada.

I started the switch-over on Monday, going to Register, NetSol and GoDaddy and changing all the old site IP’s to the new IP’s. All the sites were up and running in a couple of hours. But the eMail died. I called ComCast so they could add Rdns records for us. eMail was still dead. Called again and was told “Of course it’s dead. We need to do your DNS. Change all your IP’s to our name servers and we’ll handle it.” So we did. All the sites died within hours, and still no email. Called the next day. “It’s a propagation problem. Wait.” Called several hours later. Same reply. Two days later, 8 hours on the phone to ComCast – and over a dozen calls resulted in . . . “We don’t do DNS. You have to handle that yourselves.” My reply is unprintable.

Switched all the IP’s back at Netsol, Register and GoDaddy.

Still no eMail. All sites except those with GoDaddy are back up. GoDaddy blames ComCast. ComCast blames GoDaddy. Nobody can figure out why the eMail is dead everywhere.

The IP addresses all ping, tracert and dig fine. Example, karolawessler.com is fine al across the board, as the IP it is on (09/14/07 11:49:43 ping mail.karolawessler.com
(74.94.122.5) – but checking mail.karolawessler.com – it pings but does not DIG.

Sinanju.com (my personal site) does not ping, trace or dig. But the IP works fine (74.94.122.1)

The only difference – karolawessler.com is at register – sinanju.com is at GoDaddy.

So now I’m stuck in limbo. No site, no email, no help. Whenever I call ComCast their solution is to reset by gateway, thereby dumping my password and settings.

To add some confusion to the mess, I transferred my personal domains from register to godaddy after register literally stole a domain from me and resold it for several thousand dollars. It magically did not autorenew and they could not figure out why (although the 22 other domains that autorenewed before and after that one did so just fine!)

Anyway, before all this mess started, the DNS was still at register. Since the domains were no longer there I could not change the DNS at register.com - I had to transfer the DNS to GoDaddy. To do this I had to park the domain at GoDaddy for a few minutes, then edit the DNS and IP information in GoDaddy’s control panel, thereby unparking the domains but making the DNS active. This got my sites working on the new IP’s, but not the mail. After this is when I switched the DNS to ComCast, then back to GoDaddy. So in four days, the DNS was changed several times. In other words, a real mess.

ComCast offers no explanation and a lame “oops…sorry.” This is when I started to pull my hair out.

So to bottom line it, all sites at 74.94.122.1 are dead. Email to all my sites (74.94.122.1 - 74.94.122.5) – dead – and takes two days to bounce!

Apart from Excedrin, Pepto, Jager and Hair Club for Men, are there any suggestions?

Thanks

Rick

Just received a call from the boss of the three different techs I spoke to. Basically admitted that some retraining is obviously needed and that they messed up. They were blocking port 25 and had my DNS set up wrong. I could not do anything about these and was basically spinning my wheels for four days. The moment port 25 was opened and the DNS fixed, email worked and my missing sites were there.

Amazing. To all told it was 12 hours on the phone, four days, one bottle of Excedrin - all because some tech setup my account incorrectly.

Wonderfull.

that sucks. I know how stressful situations like this can be; well, not quite.

anyways, glad to hear all is well. Just for the record, I've used Comcast at home for going on 5 years now; I rarely have problems out of them. Then again, I'm not hosting 40 sites ;)

congrats on getting it all worked out

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