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Author Topic: Non-conspiracy Theory on the FRN  (Read 3534 times)

Offline corq

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Non-conspiracy Theory on the FRN
« on: August 30, 2011, 1635 UTC »
The "non-conspiracy, Occam's Razor" Scenarios:

Neither one of the listed nameservers for the FRN's current/cached whois listing appears to be "answering" queries.

This may be that those physical servers are offline and web queries to Joplin.com/JoplinGlobe.com are being forwarded; however since the Joplin Globe is now mirrored elsewhere, there may be no serious imperative to do much about the former hosting server FRN, or other non-essential sites.

Somehow, while it appears that Joplin Globe was reliably mirrored elsewhere, that the FRN did not receive the same courtesy.

Cached Google records (from when FRN was UP) point to the current server where 74.84.203.168 and 69.38.106.211 -- these appear to be proper mirrored servers for Joplin Globe. For whatever reason, perhaps the FRN didn't survive the move or doesn't have a solid hosting agreement with the current hosts of JoplinOnline.com or the newspaper group they're now part of. While I'm to Understand John Cruzan still works for the Joplin Globe group, they just don't seem to be sharing server space with them at present.

GeoIP Tools imply that the server for the Joplin Globe is now actually hosted or at least registered nowhere near Joplin (in light of recent tornado events this is a recommended strategy, why the FRN wasn't mirrored accordingly is unknown):

Host Name:   nsc69.38.106-211.newsouth.net
IP Address:   69.38.106.211
Country:    United States
Country code:   US (USA)
Region:   South Carolina
City:   Greenville
Postal code:   29615
Calling code:   +1
Longitude:   -82.2464
Latitude:   34.8601

AND:

Host Name:   203-168.baymountain.com
IP Address:   74.84.203.168
Country:    United States
Country code:   US (USA)
Region:   Virginia
City:   Fredericksburg
Postal code:   22401
Calling code:   +1
Longitude:   -77.4826
Latitude:   38.2981

Long and short of it appears to be that FRN.net has lost its home on the interwebs. If it were a simple backend database failure, you'd still get error pages when looking up FRN. Or an administrator chose to pull it down without putting any placeholder messages in its stead.

If intentional, this is kind of unusual practice, as it causes worldwide DNS caches to drop all records of FRN;  at present only domain ownership records remain current.

One other possibility exists: *.net domains are painfully tricky to move or transfer hosts; I learned this when attempting to move my own site, corqspy.org. Ideally you move a copy of your files to the new host, leaving the old files in place on the old server,until the forwarding kicks in - in my case it took over a week and a half.

When the domain forwarding from one host to the other finally kicks in, hopefully your files are already present on the new server - and no one's the wiser.

I suspect a hosting change might be the root of all this, and that as soon as the new home of the FRN pushes out its ip to worldwide DNS servers, life will resume as normal.

Normal, of course, being a relative term.

« Last Edit: August 30, 2011, 1957 UTC by corq »
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Offline Sealord

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Re: Non-conspiracy Theory on the FRN
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2011, 1924 UTC »
Thanks for the info corq :)
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Offline uhclem

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Re: Non-conspiracy Theory on the FRN
« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2011, 1734 UTC »
Corq is right about nameservers not answering queries, ns1.joplinglobe.com does answer pings, so whatever A record that name points to is up, but it does not answer on port 53 (DNS). ns1.joplinglobeonline.com looks like it doesn't even have an A record anymore. the joplinglobe.com site uses teklinks.com for secondary and tertiary name service so that site still works. After running ISPs for 12 years, I'm guessing someone did a favor for FRN by hosting their zone file on the dl, and after the tornado mess someone decided not to do DNS on ns1.joplinglobe.com any more and frn.net "vanished". Programmatically, moving a .net is no different from moving a .com or .info or .whatever, BIND (DNS software) doesn't care. Moving domains becomes a chore when critters with opposable thumbs get involved.

Offline Pigmeat

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Re: Non-conspiracy Theory on the FRN
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2011, 1805 UTC »
The Fredricksburg region got pounded with rain and wind from Irene,that could explain the continuing problems if that server is down.

Nothing has happened in Greenville,other than the kids at Bob Jones University,BJU, going back to school. Maybe some of the sacramental snakes got loose,made it across town,and crawled in the server?


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Re: Non-conspiracy Theory on the FRN
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2011, 2207 UTC »
Well, I don't want to pee in the FRN pool, but I expect that this situation takes a lot of the sting out of being banned from there. Kind of hard to play favorites when you don't have a site anymore.

Offline corq

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Re: Non-conspiracy Theory on the FRN
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2011, 2234 UTC »
Uhclem: thanks for that .net / .org clarification; my particular host at the time was losing my continued business, so they might have been blowing smoke youknowwhere to drag out my hosting move...

As for the dns records I definitely yield to your experience. At the time of the Joplin tornado the queries indicated that Joplin Observer sites seemed to be hosted on the same site/servers w/FRN, and are definitely different now; the "newsouth" nameserver/host was the one I chiefly remember at the time (wish I'd have kept my queries then for comparison.)

Pigmeat: Indeed I haz ur kitteh, and she is a very silly one ;-)
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Offline corq

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Re: Non-conspiracy Theory on the FRN
« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2011, 2339 UTC »
Well, I don't want to pee in the FRN pool, but I expect that this situation takes a lot of the sting out of being banned from there. Kind of hard to play favorites when you don't have a site anymore.

Oh, you.

It was that "blob" avatar. It was very unsettling...and even the FRN had standards...

Look on the bright side, you're not really dead!
Icom IC-705/AirSpyHF+ Discovery via GR5V
QTH: KMCO
plz qsl: corqpub ~at~ gmail.com
Captures posted to: http://youtube.com/uncorq
Kicks, Screams and Other Heresies: http://corq.co

 

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