29 Aug 10 Renew / Delete a Managed DNS Service
You can Renew / Delete your Managed DNS Service from the Control Panel. To do this, you need to search for the domain name for which you have purchased the Service, and access its Order details view. Click here to learn how >>
Renewing your Managed DNS Service
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In the Order details view, click Renew Service which would take you to the Renew Service Page.
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From the dropdown box, select the number of years for which you wish to Renew this Service.
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Then proceed to pay for this Renewal and the Renewal would be affected immediately.
Deleting the Service
You need to follow the steps mentioned below to Delete a Managed DNS Service:
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In the Order details view, click Delete Service which would take you to the Delete Service Page.
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Here, you would see details of the refund applicable on deletion, if any. The refund would be given to you in the form of a Credit Note. You would further have to confirm the Deletion of this Service. On confirming, changes would be effective immediately.
IMPORTANT
Deletion of a Managed DNS Service within 30 days of purchase entitles you to a full refund of your cost price. However, you would not get a refund if you deleted the Service after this period.
Tags: Control, Control Panel, Delete, Delete Service, Details View, DNS, Dns Service, Domain Name, Renew Service
24 Aug 10 Bulk Renewal
Apart from individually renewing a Managed DNS Service Order you can have a glimpse of all expiring Managed DNS Service Orders, and Renew the same in bulk from the Renewal Management Interface of your Control Panel.
The Renewal Management interface can be used as follows -
For Customers:
1. Login to your Customer Control Panel from http://manage.gossimer.biz/customer.
2. Go to Domains -> Managed DNS -> Renewal Management
3. Select Managed DNS or any other Product whose Orders you wish to renew from the drop down and enter the number of days, to obtain a list of all expiring domain names within this period, and click on Go.
For example, if you want to obtain the list of Managed DNS Orders expiring in the next 30 days, select Managed DNS from the drop-down and then enter 30 to obtain this list.
4. Select one or more Orders that you wish to Renew. To select all Orders, select the check box on the top of the form.
5. Click on the Renew Selected Orders button, to select the Number of years for which you wish to Renew each Order.
6. Upon selecting the number of years you want to renew each order for, you would be displayed your Current Debit Account Balance with Gossimer and the Total Amount for renewing the selected orders, at the bottom of the page.
о If you have selected less than 25 orders to be renewed, then upon clicking on the Continue button, you would be prompted to Pay for the Renewal of these orders.
о If you have selected more than 25 orders to be renewed, then
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if you have sufficient funds in your Current Debit Account Balance, then upon clicking on the Continue button, your Bulk Renewal request will be added to the queue and it will be automatically processed shortly.
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if you do not have sufficient funds in your Current Debit Account Balance, then you would need to first click on the Add Funds link.
This will pop-up a new window, where you need to select one of the payment methods and add sufficient funds to cover the cost of renewing these domain names (ie. Total Amount – Current Debit Account Balance).
Upon completion of the Add Funds process, close this window and refresh the Set Years for Renewal page. Now upon clicking on the Continue button, your Bulk Renewal request will be added to the queue and it will be automatically processed shortly.
IMPORTANT
At any point of time, you can only add two Bulk orders. This implies that you would not be able to add another Bulk Registration / Renewal / Modification request, if two Bulk Actions are already running. You will be able to add another Bulk request once the earlier request has been processed completely.
For Resellers:
1. Log in to your Reseller Admin Control Panel from http://manage.gossimer.biz/reseller
2. Go to Products -> Renewal Management
3. Before clicking on the Go button, select/mention the following details
Product – Select the Product whose Orders you wish to renew from the drop down
Number of Days – Enter the number of days to obtain a list of all Expiring orders of (all) your Customers within this period
Customer (optional) – If you wish to renew only orders belonging to a particular Customer, you may do so by mentioning the Customer Username (email address) or Customer ID (number) in the appropriate field. If you leave this field blank, the search will result in orders belonging to all your Customers.
For example,
Case 1 – if you want to renew Orders belonging to All Products, expiring in the next 30 days, then you would need to select the Product as All Products, mention 30 days and not fill the Customer field.
Case 2 – if you want to renew only Customer Username a@somedomain.com all orders belonging to All Products, expiring in the next 30 days, then you would need to select the Product as All Products, mention 30 days and fill the Customer field with a@somedomain.com.
4. Select one or more Orders that you wish to Renew. To select all Orders, select the check box on the top of the form.
5. Click on Renew Selected Orders, to select the Number of years for which you wish to Renew each Order.
6. Decide how you wish to Pay for the Renewal of the Orders by selecting one of the Payment Options mentioned below and then click on the Continue button to execute the Renewal
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Option 1 – Renew the Orders and the Invoices will be kept Pending for the Customer. This way, he can pay for the Invoices later.
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Option 2 – Renew the domain names using the Current Debit Account Balance of the Customer. This option would immediately debit your Customer’s Debit Account for the Cost of the Renewals. If there are insufficient funds in the Customer’s Debit Account balance, then the system would renew as many Orders as possible.
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Option 3 – Renew the Orders without raising any Invoices for the Customer.
IMPORTANT
At any point of time, you can only add two Bulk orders for any Customer. This implies that you would not be able to add another Bulk Registration / Renewal / Modification request for a Customer if two Bulk Actions are already running for this Customer. You will be able to add another Bulk request once the earlier request has been processed completely.
Tags: Account Balance, Biz, Customer, Customer Control Panel, Debit Account, DNS, Dns Service, Domains, Expiring Domain Names, Glimpse, Gossimer, Management Interface, Queue, Renewal Management, Renewal Request
17 Aug 10 What is Managed DNS? Which types of Resource Records does Gossimer allow?
The Domain Name System [DNS] is a distributed database, arranged hierarchically, containing records for domain names. The DNS system’s main aim is to match a domain name to an IP Address. In order to fulfill this role, the DNS Server contains Records [called Resource Records] in a Zone File, which contains the domain name and IP address mappings for computers contained within that Zone. All Resource Records have a TTL [Time To Live], specifying the number of seconds other DNS servers and applications are allowed to cache the record.
Most Web Hosting companies do not provide you with an interface to manage your own DNS Records and/or the ability to select multiple providers for various Services like Web Hosting, Mail Hosting, etc..
Gossimer gives you complete control over the following Resource Records by using our Managed DNS Service:
I. Address Record [A Record]
The A Record is the most basic and the most important DNS record type. They are used to translate human friendly domain names such as “www.domain.com” into IP-addresses such as 1.2.3.4 (machine friendly numbers).
When you wish to host your domain name, you will be provided with an IP address that needs to be set as an A Record for that particular domain name.
II. Mail Exchanger [MX] Record
A MX Record identifies the mail server(s) responsible for a domain name. When sending an e-mail to user@xyz.com, your mail server must first look up the MX Record for xyz.com to see which mail server actually handles mail for xyz.com (this could be mail.xyz.com – or someone else’s mail server like mail.isp.com). Then it looks up the A Record for the mail server to connect to its IP-address.
A MX Record has a Preference number indicating the order in which the mail server should be used (only relevant when multiple MX Records are defined for the same domain name). Mail servers will attempt to deliver mail to the server with the lowest preference number first, and if unsuccessful continue with the next lowest and so on.
III. Canonical Name [Alias / CNAME] Record
CNAME Records are domain name aliases. Often computers on the Internet have multiple functions such as Web Server, FTP Server, Chat Server, etc. To mask this, CNAME Records can be used, to give a single computer multiple names (aliases).
Sometimes companies register their multiple domain names for their brand-names but still wish to maintain a single website. In such cases, a CNAME Record maybe used to forward traffic to their actual website. For example, www.abc.in could be CNAMEd to www.abc.com.
The most popular use of the CNAME Record type, is to provide access to a Web Server using both the standard www.domain.com and domain.com (without the www). This is usually done by adding a CNAME-record for the www name pointing to the short name [while creating an A Record for the short name (without www)].
CNAME Records can also be used when a computer or service needs to be renamed, to temporarily allow access through both the old and new name.
IV. Authoritative Name Server [NS] Record
NS Records identify DNS servers responsible (authoritative) for a Zone. A Zone should contain one NS Record for each of its own DNS servers (primary and secondaries). This mostly is used for Zone Transfer purposes (notify). These NS Records have the same name as the Zone in which they are located.
But the most important function of the NS Record is Delegation. Delegation means that part of a domain is delegated to other DNS servers.
You can also delegate sub-domains of your own domain name (such as subdomain.yourname.com) to other DNS servers. An NS Record identifies the name of a DNS server, not the IP Address. Because of this, it is important that an A Record for the referenced DNS server exists, otherwise there may not be any way to find that DNS server and communicate with it.
If a NS Record delegates a sub-domain (subdomain.yourname.com) to a DNS Server with a name in that sub-domain (ns1.subdomain.yourname.com), an A Record for that server (ns1.subdomain.yourname.com) must exist in the Parent Zone (yourname.com). This A Record is referred to as a Glue Record, because it doesn’t really belong in the Parent Zone, but is necessary to locate the DNS Server for the delegated sub-domain.
V. Text [TXT] Record
A Text Record provides the ability to associate some text with a domain or a subdomain. This text is meant to strictly provide information and has no functionality as such. A TXT Record can store upto 255 characters of free form text. This record is generally used to convey information about the zone. Multiple TXT records are permitted but their order is not necessarily retained.
For example, you may add a TXT Record for yourname.com with the value as “This is my mail server”. Here if anybody was checking ALL or TXT records of yourname.com, they would notice the above text appearing in the TXT record.
TXT Record is also used to implement the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys specifications.
Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
Sender Policy Framework is an extension to the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SPF allows software to identify and reject forged addresses in the SMTP MAIL FROM (Return-Path), a typical nuisance in e-mail spam.
SPF allows the owner of a domain to specify their mail sending policy, e.g. which mail servers they use to send mail from their domain. The technology requires two sides to work in tandem -
i. the domain owner publishes this information in an TXT Record in the domain’s DNS zone, and when someone else’s mail server receives a message claiming to come from that domain, then
ii. the receiving server can check whether the message complies with the domain’s stated policy. If, for example, the message comes from an unknown server, it can be considered a fake.
DomainKeys
DomainKeys is an e-mail authentication system (developed at Yahoo!) designed to verify the authenticity of the E-mail sender and the message integrity (i.e,. the message was not altered during transit). The DomainKeys specification has adopted aspects of Identified Internet Mail to create an enhanced protocol called DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM).
VI. Start of Authority [SOA] Parameters
Each Zone contains one SOA Record, which holds the following parameters for the Zone -
Name of Primary DNS Server - The domain name of the Primary DNS Server for the Zone. The Zone should contain a matching NS Record.
Mailbox of the Responsible Person – The email address of the person responsible for maintenance of the Zone.
Serial Number - Used by Secondary DNS Servers to check if the Zone has changed. If the Serial Number is higher than what the Secondary Server has, a Zone Transfer will be initiated. This number is automatically increased by our Servers when changes to the Zone or its Records are made.
Refresh Interval - How often Secondary DNS Servers should check if changes are made to the zone.
Retry Interval - How often Secondary DNS Server should retry checking, if changes are made – if the first refresh fails.
Expire Interval - How long the Zone will be valid after a refresh. Secondary Servers will discard the Zone if no refresh could be made within this interval.
Minimum (Default) TTL - Used as the default TTL for new records created within the zone. Also used by other DNS Server to cache negative responses (such as record does not exist, etc.).
Tags: Complete Control, delegate, DNS, DNS system, Dns Record Type, Dns Records, Dns Server, Dns Servers, Dns Service, Domain Name System, Domain Names, Domain Owner, E Mail, Internet Mail, Ip Address, Mail Exchanger, Mail Hosting, Mail Server, Mail Servers, Mappings, Mx Record, Mx Records, Resource Records, Sending Mail, Server Mail, SOA, unknown server, Web Hosting, Web Hosting Companies, Web Mail, Web Server, www.abc.com, www.abc.in, www.domain.com, Yahoo!
16 Aug 10 Renewal Reminders
Gossimer sends mails to its Customers informing them about all Managed DNS Service Orders that are nearing their expiration date.
Customers of Gossimer:
Customers are sent Expiring Managed DNS Service Orders Renewal Instruction e-mails before they actually expire, after expiry, and on deletion of the package.
The Reminders are sent to the Customer Username from 45 days prior to the Managed DNS Service Order‘s expiry, on the 1st, 11th and 21st day of every month, until it is either Renewed or Deleted (due to non-Renewal).
This Report displays the Order ID, Domain Name, Product Category, Expiry Date, Days to Expiry and Days to Deletion, besides detailed information about how to go about renewing these orders.
Gossimer Resellers can easily view all Expiring and Expired Domain Names from the Renewal Management Interface and choose to Renew any Managed DNS Service Order on behalf of their Customer(s).
IMPORTANT
When a Managed DNS Service Order Expires,
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the order is immediately Suspended. This means that you would be unable to use your order, until it is Renewed.
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the Customer is sent an e-mail, informing him that he has 15 days to Renew his Managed DNS Service Order, post which the order is Deleted.
When the Managed DNS Service Order is Deleted, the Customer is sent one final e-mail informing him/her that the order is Deleted, since it was not Renewed within 15 days after Expiry.
Tags: Customer Username, Displays, DNS, Dns Service, Domain Name, Domain Names, Domain Renewal, E Mail, Expiration Date, Expired Domain, Expiry Date, Gossimer, Managed DNS, Management Interface, Product Category, Renewal Management, Renewal Reminders, Resellers, Sent Mail
07 Aug 10 Suspend / Unsuspend a Managed DNS Service
Order Suspension is a useful feature available to Resellers of Gossimer. In this status, the Order remains in the database but is inactive and the functionality associated with it cannot be used. No one can make ANY modifications to this Service unless it is unsuspended.
Follow the steps below to Suspend / Unsuspend Managed DNS Service -
- Login to your Reseller Control Panel from http://manage.gossimer.biz/reseller.
- Go to Products -> Search -> Managed DNS Search and search for the Domain Name for which you wish to Suspend Managed DNS Service.
- In the Search Results, click on Managed DNS Service for the Domain.
- The next page is the Order Details view, where you would find the Suspend / Unsuspend Button.
- If you wish to Suspend the Service, you would have to select the Check Box for Suspension and enter the reason for Suspension and click on Update.
- To Unsuspend, unselect the Check Box and Update the same.
Tags: DNS, Managed DNS Service
05 Aug 10 Listing, Searching and Managing Orders
In order to manage your Managed DNS orders, you need to search for them from your Control Panel with Gossimer, LLC, and access their Order Details view. To do so, follow the simple steps mentioned below -
1. Login to your Control Panel.
Resellers do so from http://manage.gossimer.com/reseller;
Customers do so from http://manage.gossimer.com/customer.
2. Once logged in to your Control Panel,
Resellers, go to Products -> Search -> Managed DNS Search
Customers, go to Domains -> Search -> Managed DNS Search
and search for the Domain Name for which the service has been purchased. (To list all orders, leave all search parameters blank).3. In the next page you would see a list of all Domain Names, with Managed DNS Services bought through Gossimer, LLC. Clicking on the Domain name would take you to the Order details view, where you can manage your service.
Tags: Control Panel, Dns Search, Domain Name, Domain Names, Gossimer LLC, Llc, Managed Dns Services, Reseller Customers, Resellers, Search Parameters, Simple Steps
04 Aug 10 Adding a partial wild-carded Address record
Our Managed DNS service currently does not support partial wildcards in Address (A) Records. For instance, consider the following example, where Managed DNS services are purchased for domainname.com:
Domain name: domainname.com
Go to Manage DNS Records, and add the following A record
Hostname: *.something.domainname.com
Destination IP Address: 203.199.114.89
The system will throw an exception: Invalid Name *.something for A Records
In order to circumvent this, you would have to add a new Managed DNS Order for something.domainname.com, and create the wild-carded A record here, as below.
Domain name: something.domainname.com
Hostname: *.something.domainname.com
Destination IP Address: 203.199.114.89
Now, abc.something.domainname.com will point to 203.199.114.89
Tags: Abc, Address Record, DNS, Dns Records, Dns Service, Domain Name, Domainname, Invalid Name, Ip Address, Wildcards
Gossimer Promotions and Announcements
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- .CN Launch - Coming Soon August 16, 2009We are glad to announce the launch of .CN - the most popular and fastest growing ccTLD worldwide. The .CN domain extension has seen an exemplary growth since its launch throughout the world. Earlier this year, .CN crossed over 13 million registrations to become the second most registered domain extension after .COM. Moreover, with China now representing the […]
- Live Chat Product Discontinuation - Moved to 18th August August 16, 2009Based on feedback that we received from several Resellers, we have decided to postpone the Live Chat discontinuation to the August of 18th, 2009 at 12:30 UTC. From the 18th of August, it will not be possible to purchase new Live Chat packages but exisiting packages will continue to function normally. […]