Like a lot of people, I have a few domain names. Like some people, I register them at domainsatcost.ca. Frankly, anyone who wants to buy a .ca domain name has to deal with some of the crap that CIRA throws at you. It's really not that big a deal but it can be a pain for first time .ca owners. There is a specific list of registrars who are permitted to sell .ca domain names, and how GoDaddy got on that list I'll never know. Thankfully the pinheads at Network Solutions are NOT on the list… you can't use any other WHOIS tool to find domain information other than theirs. I have a bunch of emails that were sent back and forth from my Hotmail address to these guys that I may post here someday if I feel like doing all the formatting that will be required to make it readable. The short story, they are insulting you and you probably don't even know it.

So why would anyone care about this? Well if you ever decide to own a domain name (as millions of others already do) then you'll want to make sure that your domain purchasing goes smoothly and without annoyance. I used to keep all of my domain ownership under EasyDNS because they were one of the first organizations to offer .ca registrations. They were also very good at what they did and they never sent me spam. I received notifications about any expected downtime and they had a decent interface for managing my domains. They are now a little bigger and the interface is a little more cluttered but I bet they still do a good job. I don't know though because I am typically using domainsatcost.ca now. They charge $13 for a .ca domain and $15 for a .com domain. They do not include DNS hosting with that but I'll get to that later. They also have a very minimalist interface for managing your domains. EasyDNS on the other hand offers both .com and .ca domains at $35 and has lots of fancy features many people don't understand in the least. I'm not saying they are bad, just geared more towards the medium sized business I think.

Now what about this DNS stuff then? Well first you have to understand how the domain/DNS/hosting triangle works. First you need to buy your domain name, this grants you ownership of the name and nothing else. One of the things you need to provide when you buy a domain is a list of DNS servers (typically between 2 and 6 servers). These servers are not the address of your webserver but rather the names or addresses of the machines that will tell the rest of the world where to find your webserver. You then have to go configure those DNS servers to point to your actual webserver! If you buy your coolguy domain at EasyDNS then you'll be able to configure all of this right on EasyDNS's management page. If you bought your domain at Domainsatcost then you'll have to find someone else to host your DNS… like EveryDNS. I've been using these guys for a few years now and they are friggin' awesome. The price is perfect and they have a totally minimalist (sometimes spelled g-o-o-d) interface for managing your DNS. They have instructions on how to do things and they even have geographically diverse servers.

So now where are we? Well, you go to Domainsatcost and buy your domain. When it asks you for name servers you give it the nsX.everydns.net servers. Then you log in to EveryDNS and tell it that your domain name should point to IP address w.x.y.z. That's it! Well, except for setting up your webserver, but that's another day ain't it?

If anyone happens to find their way to this stupid posting and has any clue about an alternative to Visio please for the love of everything evil PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT IT IS! I have been trying to find an alternative to Microsoft Visio that doesn't suck. There are obviously a parade of applications that claim to be a Visio replacement but many of them are just terrible for functionality while only a couple are of any value. The ones that are not completely useless have a nasty habit of saving the document images OUTSIDE of the actual file you are saving. That's right, if you create a network diagram with images of your devices, connected by lines… you could be looking at a directory with 1 saved file and hundreds of images in it. Imagine how shitty that would look if you wanted to save multiple diagrams.
So how is it that Visio is the only reasonable quality network diagramming software? Is it possible that the only way to make network diagrams is to fill your PC with bloated shit?