DNS Transfer In Progress - UPDATE: neoarkcradle.net WORKS!

[Arynis]

Hi everyone!

I've been getting reports that the site cannot be accessed or that it has been down a lot lately.

The site has been up all along, however, our former URL, http://neoarkcradle.net or http://neoarkcradle.net/forum/ won't work until the DNS transfer finishes.

You could formerly access the current forum from the above URL because the site had a redirect to this location, but now that the DNS transfer is underway, the domain no longer points to said redirect, meaning the site would appear as if it was down.

Short Version: The DNS Transfer will finish in a few days, please access the forum from http://188.166.126.212/forum in the meantime.

Technical explanation on the situation below, if you're interested.

What is a DNS transfer, and why did we need it?

First of all, DNS stands for Domain Name System: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Domain_Name_System

In our case, neoarkcradle.net is our domain to make our site easier to remember and accessible over our IP address, which is http://188.166.126.212/ .

Shadowfang explains:

The DNS is a lookup table where your TCP/IP stack goes to ask "soooo... where is this neoarkcradle.net?" and it will answer 188.blabla
And then your IP protocol will try to ask your router to provide a route to that host with the least amount of hops.

Regarding hops, basically you're transferred from computer to computer until you're directed to your destination.

So what's the DNS Transfer about?

Now, we have needed a DNS transfer because we have moved hosts, but our domain was still pointing to our old location, which no longer applies. Ergo, we needed to transfer it so we can keep using neoarkcradle.net with our current host/location.

Shadowfang explains:

First we inform our old registrar to unlock. Then we inform the new registrar we want to transfer.
Then the new registrar asks for a code. Then we ask the code from the old registrar. Then we give the code to the new registrar, which starts the transfer.
Then both registrars send an email to the registered domain admin email address, to ask for confirmation of the transfer.
Then the old registrar removes the A-record from their name servers and we add the A-record to the new registrar's DNS.
The A-record is a piece of text that says "neoarkcradle.net = 188.blabla"
The process of DNS update is one of thousands of servers telling eachother there was a change. And that takes a while for all of them to get the message. Think of it as one of those emergency call lists. Person A calls B and C. Person B calls D and E and Person C call F and G... ad infinitum.
If you're lucky, your ISP uses person A and you see the change within nanosecs. If you are not and your ISP uses person ZZZZZ, it might take 24h.

Since the transfer is already underway, the ETA for the process to fully finish is a few days as most. Once it's finished, you'll be able to access neoarkcradle.net as before.

Also, don't worry about links containing our IP address instead of neoarkcradle.net (such as in forum posts), they will not break - after all, neoarkcradle.net is just a fancy cover for http://188.166.126.212/, our real address.

So there you go, hopefully this explanation helps clear up the confusion.