discussion Would mandatory DNS checks help with portfolio-wide nameserver changes?

[nicenicnicenic is verified member.]

When moving a portfolio to a different DNS provider, the same nameserver update may involve different registry requirements. For .de, the new servers must already be reachable and authoritative for the domain before the change is accepted. That can catch a zone that wasn't prepared.

For a bulk move, would you prefer more registries to enforce those checks, even if some domains need attention before proceeding? Or should the owner receive the results and make the final call?

 

[accurate]

What?

 

[nicenicnicenic is verified member.]

What?

I probably didn't explain it very clearly, sorry :<

Say you're moving 100 domains to a new DNS provider, but the new nameservers aren't ready for 10 of them.

Should the system block those 10 changes until the DNS is ready, or just show a warning and let the owner decide?

 

[accurate]

Domain investors usually don't care.

 

[ElhagMousab]

The "domain investors usually don't care" answer is half right, but the part it skips is where the money goes.

Two cases keep coming up for me. The first is the drift case. Someone moves a portfolio off a registrar in batches over a few weeks. Two names in the batch had their nameservers changed by hand six months ago, and nobody wrote it down. A registry that is authoritative-checking catches that before the domain goes dark. The classic version is the .de example: the new servers have to answer authoritatively for the domain before the registry accepts the change. Without that check the update succeeds, and the domain simply stops resolving. It costs nothing at that moment and nobody notices until a client's email bounces days later. I have had that happen on a bulk move where one zone file was not ready.

The second case is the one I would push back on: the owner making the final call on 200 names. That sounds reasonable and it is how I would want to work, but it assumes the owner has current knowledge of every zone. In a portfolio of 150 to 200 names, that assumption fails. Most people cannot tell you which of their names still have a hosting panel managing the DNS.

So I would not treat it as checks versus autonomy. For me the useful split is a hard block only where the result is silent breakage, and a warning we can acknowledge everywhere else. A record that does not resolve is very different from a record that resolves to the wrong place.

Would the ones who have run a large bulk migration agree, or has the warning-only model been enough for you in practice?