
Is Godaddy delaying domain transfer requests? - prateekdayal
https://skitch.com/prateekdayal/gwdp1/dnsimple-transfer-status-for-reminderhawk.com
======
aeden
Anthony from DNSimple here. We've definitely seen a lot more of these messages
since the SOPA announcement just before Christmas. Prior to that I almost
never saw domains stalled because of problems getting at whois data. Whether
GoDaddy is doing it on purpose or if they are just overwhelmed with the number
of domains that are being transferred out is pure speculation at this point.

In the case of DNSimple, if you get a message like that we are currently
recommending that you email us (support@dnsimple.com) and let us know which
domains are currently responding with that message and we'll cancel them so
you can try them again. It's a brute force way of dealing with it, it's
inelegant and may end up causing even more problems for GoDaddy, but we have
found that has helped a bit.

To be certain, this is different than the 5 day waiting period that ICANN
allows. That only comes into effect _after_ you've submitted the transfer
request to the registry, and if you haven't received an email to authorize the
transfer request then you aren't at that point yet.

~~~
Cushman
Can you say a little about what it would mean for Whois to be "overwhelmed"?
We're used to hearing about sites going down dealing with hundreds or
thousands of requests per second, and as much as we'd all like to see GoDaddy
collapse into rubble their transfers are probably more on the order of
thousands a day.

How plausible is it that they could actually be seeing technical difficulties?

~~~
aeden
I agree that it seems unlikely that the whois server is having technical
difficulties, rather they are probably throttling requests. Consider that
spammers use whois servers as a means for harvesting email addresses and
therefore they are likely limiting requests from specific IP addresses.

On the other hand, if I were a relatively large registrar I'd figure that I
should have a mechanism for getting whitelisted at other major registrars, so
I find it hard to believe that this issue should not already be resolved,
although clearly it has not.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
What incentive does GoDaddy have to provide a whitelist mechanism?

~~~
aeden
None unless someone can get ICANN to consider their behavior a violation of
the ICANN registry/registrar agreement.

~~~
thotpoizn
Interestingly enough, not long after a number of "blocked" customers
(including myself) submitted complaints to ICANN about all this tomfoolery,
GoDaddy contacted NameCheap and let them know that the blocking was all taken
care of. Also, my stuck transfers suddenly unstuck.

We can all speculate about whether this was malice, incompetence, or just
plain old DDOS protection working as designed. Either way, it looks like the
squeaky wheel got the grease.

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PStamatiou
3 days ago I transferred ~15 domains. The first half arrived just fine, but
the last half is stuck. Those transfers have not shown in GoDaddy's pending
transfer page, even after accepting Namecheap's verification emails.

~~~
huhtenberg
Hm. It is possible that they set the system to start "throttling" the
transfers after a certain number. I transferred 6 and saw no problems.

Anyone care to share their transfer numbers and "stuck" experiences?

~~~
yuxt
I transferred 1 domain December 22. It is still with godaddy

~~~
artursapek
Same here, the namecheap status is "Domain awaiting transfer initiation..."

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PStamatiou
Update from namecheap: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393330>

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untog
Sudden uptick in requests + the holidays = a multitude of reasons why there
might be a delay.

Don't get me wrong, I dislike GoDaddy. But let's not jump the gun on these
things.

~~~
diego
I just got this from a namecheap customer service chat:

"Please let me explain the transfer mechanism in order to make it more clear.
On the first stages of the transfer process our system needs to obtain the
full domain contact information from the old registrar. Their system should
provide us with the full Whois data on the domain automatically in order for
us to start the Verification process and be able to proceed with the transfer
initiation. Currently Godaddy blocks our IP addresses and does not provide our
system with the _full_ contact information (they are not disclosing the email
addresses listed with domains), thus we need to gather this data manually"

I do a whois and get all the information, apparently they don't.

~~~
joshstrange
I am having the EXACT same problem. My domains look like this on namecheap
<http://imgur.com/mtSsd> and they said that GoDaddy was blocking them from
getting the Whois info as well.

I understand not wanting to jump to conclusions but I trust GoDaddy about as
far as I can throw the elephants that their CEO shoots...

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maxklein
I was planning on transferring only half my domains from godaddy this month,
but now with this, I'm transferring them all.

------
gkoberger
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
-Hanlon's Razor

~~~
wnight
When dealing with a profitable company you pretty much have to assume they're
smart enough, leaving malice as the most likely explanation.

Especially on the heels of supporting SOPA, a pretty malicious thing to do.

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thotpoizn
This seems like a good use-case for a distributed whois proxy... I wouldn't
mind running a node for a few weeks to help NameCheap get through the backlog,
especially if it helps liberates my couple of domains that are currently held
hostage...

~~~
aeden
This sounds like a good idea, although the registrars would need to know that
there are additional whois mirrors available and start using them, however
there are other issues to consider:

* Registrars would have to trust that the data in the mirror has not been tampered with. I think there is an assumption that a whois server name that is provided through the registry whois server is going to be correct.

* Mirrors would still need to rate limit to cause problems for spammers who are harvesting email addresses, or they'd have to whitelist registrars.

The Whois protocol was a decent idea...15 years ago. What we need now is a
better way of verifying domain ownership.

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citricsquid
Transfers take forever, it's not a problem with godaddy. I transferred a
domain into godaddy _before_ all this SOPA drama and it finally "arrived"
yesterday, 7 days later.

edit: seems this is an unrelated issue and _before_ it gets to the transfer
stage, my mistake.

~~~
auxbuss
4 hours average over the past year, ime.

There is no reason it should take longer. Some of the delay is in the email
cross checks with the domain owner. It does not takes a day, let alone days,
to move a domain, even when retaining DNS info. Above 4 hours need an
explanation.

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aaronpk
Not sure. Only 3 of my 15 transfer requests from Friday have gone through.

~~~
aaronpk
This explains it: [http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/26/godaddy-
trans...](http://community.namecheap.com/blog/2011/12/26/godaddy-transfer-
update/)

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dangrossman
Can anyone who's successfully transferred a .COM domain to Namecheap verify
which registrar appears on the new WHOIS, Namecheap or eNom? I'm still
planning my own move and where to go is a tough move -- I think it's between
namecheap and name.com now, and I don't want to move if namecheap is still
reselling .COM through eNom.

Interestingly, I looked up all the recent YC-funded companies I could think of
and 99% were still at GoDaddy. I was hoping to see some pattern in who they
chose to move to, but they haven't moved (yet).

~~~
randlet
I transferred a .com from GD to Namecheap and whois is now showing:

Registration Service Provided By: Namecheap.com Contact: support@namecheap.com
Visit: <http://namecheap.com>

Domain name: simplehuckel.com

Registrant Contact: WhoisGuard WhoisGuard Protected ()

    
    
       Fax: 
       11400 W. Olympic Blvd. Suite 200
       Los Angeles, CA 90064
       US
    

Administrative Contact: WhoisGuard WhoisGuard Protected +1.6613102107 Fax:
+1.6613102107 11400 W. Olympic Blvd. Suite 200 Los Angeles, CA 90064 US

Technical Contact: WhoisGuard WhoisGuard Protected +1.6613102107 Fax:
+1.6613102107 11400 W. Olympic Blvd. Suite 200 Los Angeles, CA 90064 US

~~~
dangrossman
Thanks. Your domain is owned by ENOM. The "service provided by Namecheap" part
is not part of the record at Verisign.

[http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/registry-
data.jsp?doma...](http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/registry-
data.jsp?domain=simplehuckel.com)

------
RobSpectre
I received the same indication from NameCheap's support group. One transfer
placed 24 Dec went through - the rest are waiting.

------
jscore
Finally released the domains from GoDaddy by clicking on the domain and doing
'Accept'.

Now, when I do a whois it's showing as registered to eNom (I was xferring to
namecheap) and then showing domain not found.

On namecheap's side it's showing as pending - not action required from me.

Anyone seen similar behavior?

~~~
aeden
I believe Namecheap still resells some TLDs from Enom. What has probably
happened is that the name has been released at the registrar, Enom has
received the transfer acknowledgement but NameCheap probably has not picked up
the completed transfer (there is no notification mechanism so transfer orders
have to be polled).

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freejack
Is this a Namecheap specific issue or more general to eNom who they are a
reseller for. Nothing on the enom system status page...
<http://www.enom.com/registrynews.asp>

~~~
aeden
Enom is definitely having issues getting whois data, although I was under the
impression that Namecheap was now accredited and as such would have started
communicating directly with the registry for .com and .net at least. Maybe not
though.

~~~
dangrossman
You're right, Namecheap is an accredited registrar on its own, not a reseller
anymore.

[http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-
services/domai...](http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-
services/domain-name-services/find-registrar/index.xhtml?loc=en_US)

~~~
aeden
They can be accredited and still resell, which I think they may be doing for
some TLDs. For each TLD you want to be a registrar for you have to go through
some sort of accreditation process with that TLD, so getting direct access to
a large list of TLDs is quite a significant effort. It may just be that they
haven't gotten to it yet for all of them.

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Jayasimhan
Now, I'm more inclined to transfer my domains..

------
shiftpgdn
Did you go and accept the transfer at GoDaddy? Otherwise it takes a week.

~~~
prateekdayal
I never got the email to accept. I have done this before and it took just
minutes

~~~
shiftpgdn
Login to your GoDaddy account and accept the transfer from there.

~~~
aeden
If he has not received the authorization email then it most likely means that
the transfer request has not been submitted to the registry which means that
GoDaddy has no knowledge of the transfer yet.

~~~
prateekdayal
Yes. There is nothing to accept in Godaddy so far. It's been a few hours.
Happening to another domain of mine too

