This section will help you understand and troubleshoot some of the InterNIC issues which you may face. Listed below are reasons why a domain name has not been registered properly or in a timely manner. Of course these are not all the possibilities, but listed below are the most frequent situations that we have encountered.

If you have any questions regarding a NEW domain registration or a TRANSFER domain, please e-mail Technical Support.

Domain Transfers

If you already have a domain name registered, you can easily transfer that domain name to be hosted on our servers, even if you already have a web site in place. Once the actual transfer starts, you will normally have at least 24 hours to upload your web site files to your new site before it becomes active (during this time the old site is still live). We do not charge a registration fee to transfer a hosting account. (Note: this document refers to the transfer of a hosting account - where a domain is pointed - not the actual domain registration. ITS can also transfer your domain registration to our system as well.)

Now that the InterNIC domain registration has been opened to multiple organizations, we can no longer always automate domain transfers and you may have to start the transfer process yourself using the information we provide. See below for the information required.

When changes are made, e-mailed requests for approval may be sent to the admin and/or technical contacts on the domain. If the NIC doesn't receive approval from the admin or technical contact, there will be a delay in the completion of the transfer. The current contacts for a domain name can be found using our whois lookup program.

Transfer domain requests may also be delayed if the approval from the admin and technical contact is not coming from the correct e-mail address. (e.g. the e-mail listed with the InterNIC is an e-mail forward and the user replies from the wrong e-mail address).

A delay can be caused by the admin or technical contact completing the acknowledgement incorrectly. This occurs often when they are using AOL. When using AOL, the customer must keep in mind that the message must be intact. When they hit reply, they will need to see the COMPLETE form and place the YES or Y in the appropriate location. This is generally line 0a.

A delay can happen if the customer's physical address has changed and InterNIC (or your registrar) was not notified.

A delay will occur if the domain is "on hold" status. This occurs when the domain registration payment has not been made. InterNIC has put up an online web site for accepting credit card payments of domain registrations, at https://payments.netsol.com/ . It is an improvement over the phone-based system because international customers can use it (through their web browsers), and the customer does not need to know the invoice number. Do not forget that it needs to be https: instead of http: - if your browser doesn't support SSL, it won't work.

New Domains

When registering a new domain, use all numbers when listing the phone and fax numbers. You cannot have alphabet letters in it. (ex. 888-FOR-SALE)

Be advised that the foreign characters of non-English alphabets will cause syntax errors (e.g., é, þ, or other foreign characters).

When using our online order form, do not indicate anything in the State Field unless it is a U.S. state. (ex: You live in Germany and register a .com domain. On the order form, please leave the State Field blank. Do not list the initials DE or Germany in this field. You can list the city and country in the City field if desired.)

The colon character (":") has been known to cause syntax errors when placed in the order/transfer template.

InterNIC Update Times

Zone Files:
Servers world wide look to this information to find out where to point the domain name. This includes contact names, owner and DNS info. The DNS provided in these files tell the servers how to contact the IP address that is associated with the domain name. Zone Files are currently updated every night at a minimum.

Whois:
This is the database gives end-users the information needed to either register or transfer a domain name. The database will provide you with information pertaining to the registration status and who might be listed as contacts on the domain in question. The whois updates currently everyday at 5:30 a.m. EST (even on weekends). It does take several hours before we can actually see the changes from the web based version. Changes to this information (such as the name servers for your domain) typically take 24-72 hours to take effect worldwide. ITS provides a lookup program to find out the current contact informaiton for your domain.

Domains Registered With Other Registrars

If your domain is not registered with ITS, to have ITS host your domain you will need to make some modifications to your domain registration settings.

While you can optionally update other information for your domain, such as the address or technical contact, the only required step is to change the name servers for your domain to these values:

ns1.teamITS.net
ns2.teamITS.net
ns1.everydns.net
ns4.everydns.net

If you would prefer to list ITS as the technical contact for your Network Solutions-registered domain, please use our existing contact user ID of 17508615 (handle TS11387-OR) rather than creating another account for us. For other registrars, please contact Technical Support for the correct information to use (you can always change this later).

If your domain registrar does not allow you to change the name servers which apply for your domain, you will need to change the IP address of the "www" A record (machine name) to your new account's IP address, and the MX (mail exchange) record for your domain to the correct incoming mail server. This will allow mail for your domain to arrive properly. In virtually all cases the MX record should be set to your domain name ("example.com") but check with Technical Support to be sure.

Another option would be to transfer your domain registration to ITS, so that our Technical Support staff will be able to make any necessary modifications for you, at no charge.

Information about nameservers.net DNS servers that are not used by ITS.

Please note: the information on this page applies to ITS web hosting plans. It may or may not apply to other environments. If you are looking for a feature described here, or better support from your hosting provider, please consider hosting your site with ITS!

1555 N Naperville/Wheaton Road, Suite 107
Naperville, IL 60563
phone 630.420.2550
fax 630.420.2771