Anyone know if something has happened to Sam Norris?

We've been trying to reach him or actually anyone from Changeip since Tuesday morning (UTC +2). We've sent various emails, left countless voice messages both on the office phone and Sam's mobile and even sent a text message.

It's just weird that there is complete silence.

I'm having problems with changeip also.
He has another site and is doing business here in the same city I'm in.
I've referred jobs to him, vice-versa.
I don't think it appropriate to post his other domain or ph. but, I've also tried calling with no response.
Been stormy here, so maybe his network is down, or something minor.
I'll update if I know of anything new.

Hi guys

Thank goodness I'm not the only one trying to get hold of Sam.

I also left several emails and online ticket submissions. I even tried their sales channels etc.

It is extremely expensive to make international calls from South Africa, so I didn't call.

I really hope nothing has happened to him, he is a very important person in the Mikrotik community!

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of problems are you guys experiencing?

I have a few free domains .dyndns.pro etc which is working perfectly well, but my domain itbzone.net isn't.

eg test.itbzone.net shows on the ChangeIP UI as eg 1.2.3.4, but when I ping it or do a nslookup using ns1.changeip.com, it won't resolve to 1.2.3.4. There has to be something seriously wrong with their infrastructure.

Thanks guys! G

Same issues as other people, dynamic host updates with the correct IP address but you can't resolve it.

I can understand him having a problem but a simple email/note on the website would be useful.

Let's hope it's nothing more serious.

I agree

I really hope nothing happened to him

If nothing gets resolved by tomorrow morning I'm going to have to come up with another solution.

What other dynamic providers are there that work with RouterOS?

OK, good news. Sam has replied to us.

I don't know what the problem was/is but at least there's light at the end of the fiber cable.

Not to whack Sam - but while it's not SSL wrapped, I have a script for DynDNS that is, IMO, very robust.
[Nudge, nudge - MikroTik - how about implementing a SSL wrapped fetch!]

Someone also submitted a change that would let it work with noip as well.

Thread with the script here:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=60018

-Greg

That is EXCELLENT news

There are DynDNS options, but I would REALLY like to stay with ChangeIP

Anybody got any news ?

Hi guys

Sam is good and well, just replied to me saying all should be fixed. I tested and mine is working perfectly again.

THANKS SAM!

cool ... working again

Looks like its back up.
36 hours downtime, for a paid for service, and not a word from them...

Not a good sign, just happy to have my VPN's and remote updates working on sites again.

Please dont make me move back to DYNDNS !!!

Looks like its back up.
36 hours downtime, for a paid for service, and not a word from them...

Not a good sign, just happy to have my VPN's and remote updates working on sites again.

Please dont make me move back to DYNDNS !!!

I'm just as glad all my services have been restored. Every and any product can give problems, I don't have a problem with that, and with the excellent service Sam is giving us, I'm more than happy to stay with ChangeIP for life.

But if anything like this happens again, Sam, please just put something on the homepage telling people you are aware of the problem, or even an autoresponse on support mails.

I honestly for a second thought you had an accident and died when noone replied to my support tickets.

Thanks again for getting so many people back online again

G

I am starting to notice the problem again, anyone else?

False alarm. All services up

@shawnsmith

Just curious. What do you like about ChangeIP that you don't about DynDNS?

[IMO, the biggest + for DynDNS is the huge distributed network and redundancy they have. Their upper tier stuff is so very far beyond what I need for any of my clients/myself - but the result is a system that is far more advanced than it might otherwise be.]

Another nice upside, for me at least, is I've used them from forever and I still have quite a number of no-expiration credits for custom domain/zones since I got them when a credit was good for forever. Kudos to them for keeping their word all these years.

-Greg

Sorry guys - was just on vacation with horrible cell reception. The problem that occurred was not notifying us because it only affected a few zones on the system ... we've put some measures in to catch this problem in the future should it ever happen again ( shouldn't! ).

Sam

Our ddns updates is broken again, anyone else with the same problem?

can't get to http://www.changeip.com

even http://downorisitjustme.com/res.php?url ... angeip.com agrees with me.

anyone know anything?

his phone goes to voice mail.

Hi guys

Does anyone know if ChangeIP is down?

I keep getting "Blacklisted" and/or "Timeout" errors in my Mikrotik logs. This has major repocussions as none of my clients can access anything from outside their offices. My phones are ringing off the hook, and I can't get hold of ChangeIP support.

I'm trying to manually update my records, but the WEBUI is also unresponsive, can't get passed the logon screen.

Please let me know if anyone has any news.

Many thanks, G

Seems to be up again.

Need to find an alternative as this service of late is not something I rely on anymore.

Any pointers?

I've setup DynDNS for a client last month, as they already had a DynDNS account. They seem to be stable so far (although its probably way too early to say for sure). But I love ChangeIP, as Sam is part of the Mikrotik community. I just wish he would give better reporting. If there ARE problems, just put a notice on the homepage, it can't be THAT difficult to do.

It seems to be down again

I have now managed to manually update the records online, but the fqdn's are still resolving to the old addresses. I tried nslookups too, and they confirm that.

I guess I'll have to start looking at an alternative solution too.

Does anyone have a contact number for Sam or ChangeIP?

Not on me but I think the quickest way to get a response is to send a text.

I created support tickets online to all 3 departmens (sales, abuse and support). I also sent emails to all the contact addresses on their website, but those mails came back as rejected due to spam.

At this point I feel like booking a flight from South Africa and going there in person to find out whats happening!

I'm now getting desperate. I tried all means to contact ChangeIP support, but no response.

I have clients threatning to cancel their service since they can't access their office networks.

Anyone have any other ideas on how to contact Sam / ChangeIP?

Sorry but I also don't have the number. Checked our database, nothing.

Thanks for everyone's help!

I did a whois on changeip.com and it seems they are part of http://www.networksolutions.com. I'm going to try and contact Network Solutions. Will update as soon as I have more information.

I also found this on the whois page:

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Operations, ChangeIP noc@changeip.com
1200 Brickell Avenue
Suite 1950
Miami, FL 33131
US
8007913367 fax: 7862246593

Unfortunately my phone is barred from making international calls. Could someone from the US perhaps give them a call on our behalf?

Thanks a stack!

try using Skype to call internationally

Thats a good idea. I've never used Skype for PSTN calls, I guess there's always a first time for everything

Have the same problem with changeip on my mikrotik.
Giepie, write some information if you will find it!!

PLS

Hi guys

I just placed another online support ticket, and I finally received one of those automated replies (those that say thanks for contacting support, your ticket number is.....). I have however not received an answer yet.

Please let us know if anyone else receive any kind of updates.

G

Its seems to be working again

It did seem to work for a short period, but it is not working right now. I created a test zone (testingg.itbzone.net) and manually changed the IP to 1.2.3.4 and updated the records. I waited for a looooong time for that hostname to become resolvable, and when it finally did, it had the correct IP of 1.2.3.4, so I changed it again to see how soon the change would take affect. Its been several hours now, and it is still resolving to 1.2.3.4.

Also, none of my ddns clients are updating (+-14 of them)

I can confirm it does appear to be working again.

I wish Sam could at least let us know what happened. If this ever had to happen again, I'l be forced to cancel immediately.

I withdraw my previous post. Although DDNS does seem to update, it takes for EVER to reflect. It shouldn't take more than 5min (as indicated on the ChangeIP control panel), but it takes much longer than that).

I think this time Sam really died. Last time we thought he died, it only took about a day for the problem to be resolved. According to the update log (on ChangeIP homepage), none of my ddns clients updated since the 23d (which was 2 days ago).

RIP Sam!

I finally received this message:


We are seeing successful updates by your microtik router.

Sincerely,
Scott
Support Department
ChangeIP.com



And replied with this:

Hi Scott

Thanks for the reply. I almost fell off my chair to finally get a reply after almost a day without DDNS!

Currently it does seem that DDNS clients are able to update. The PPPoE IP is reflected correctly on the ChangeIP WEBUI, but when I try to resolve that IP, it still gives me the old one.

For example, vpn.itbzone.net's current IP is 105.236.233.227. This IP also shows on the ChangeIP WEBUI, but when I ping vpn.itbzone.net, it resolves to: 105.236.212.118

Even when I do a NS lookup against ns1.changeip.com it gives me the wrong address:

C:\Users\giepie>nslookup vpn.itbzone.net ns1.changeip.com
Server: ns1.changeip.com
Address: 209.208.5.12

Name: vpn.itbzone.net
Address: 105.236.212.118


Please investigate and fix urgently!

Many thanks, G

As mentioned earlier, I did receive a reply from Scott at ChangeIP support, only to say DDNS is updating. That was 2 hours ago. I immediately replied with proof that although the DNS on the WEBUI seems to be updating, it doesn't resolve to the correct IP. Even running a nslookup against ChangeIP's servers (ns1.changeip.net etc) it resolves to the old IP's.

I sent a few more replies, but have not received any response from them since. I'm really dissapointed in ChangeIP. I've always raved about it, but just the mere fact that they can't even send decent updates, or a notice on their homepage or a mail with a simple apology is in my opinion absolutely pathetic.

Sam, please work on this, your service levels are really not on!

It is now 1am and I've been battling with this since yesterday morning. I would really like to go to bed, as I have to be up early morning to perform maintenance on a highsite, so I can't waste ANY MORE TIME finding work-arounds for this absolutely stupid problem.

G

Its not working anymore, was working for a while last night. This started on Saturday afternoon and 3 days later no feedback.

Its working now for me.

It certainly isn't working for me right now. Do you have a free account or do you also have your own domain?

The ddns clients update fine to ChangeIP, and the correct IP is reflected in the control panel, BUT when I do a nslookup to the fqdn (example testingg.itbzone.net), it gives me an old address. I did nslookups against ChaneIP's own name servers, and still I'm getting the wrong resolutions.

What really gets my blood boiling is the fact that they don't let us know whats happening. This is the worst service I have experienced in a long long time. I had better service at dodgy tuckshops with cobwebs...

I'm still getting 'Blacklisted' errors.

Then a ton of emails telling me so.

Eish, broken again.

Broken again, no status updates, no response to support mails.

Seems like I'll be going to DynDNS or No-IP (or any **real** or **reliable** Dynamic DNS host). Hopefully changeip will give me a refund due to lack of service

Seems to be working again, after sending a few hundred mails with the hope to get support.

I pleaded with them to put a status link on their homepage where they can paste any issues, so people like us could first check the status page before contacting support. I also suggested they send a bulk mail to affected clients (or some other sort of notification). They said they'll look into it, but obviously they lost their glasses or something.

I'm a very patient person, but I'm absolutely loosing my temper with the ChangeIP situation. If it wasn't for the fact that I just renewed my subscription a few weeks back, I would have cancelled without a doubt.

I have been communicating with the new MD of changeIP via E-Mail. Apparently Sam isn't part of ChangeIP anymore (or perhaps just the dyndns devision).

He gently hit me on the nose for flooding their helpdesk, and also explained their SLA to me. Their maximum turnaround time is 24 hours, unless it is an emergency. The issues we usually experience (and note on this forum) are considered isolated and not emergencies. From what I understand a serious emergency would be one where major areas are affected.

I again pleaded that they also put these smaller issues on their status page, as that would give us an instant indication about the problem. (http://www.changeip.com/status.asp)

Giepie, the problem is that for them it may not be an emergency but for us, all our clients are not getting email etc.

It probably affects thousands of just South African users.

Anyway, I have set-up a similar system which I will be launching soon. You are welcome to test a client or two if you so wish.

I am currently running all my customers in parallel and this last weekend we were effectively not down due to my system kicking in.

Later.

Hi Hilton

I would be honored to help with the testing

If you wish, you could mail me here: giepie at itblanket dot net

I also thought of doing my own dyndns system, but in order to do that 100% effectively, you need a server on a network which never goes down, or make use of multiple servers and find a solid way of getting those servers to know what the most recent IP is etc.

Looking forward to your reply!


G