Ping is not a good way to check that, since it could be blocked. Try

    dig @dns1.registrar-servers.com [some-domain]

Here it's slow but working.

Google keeps ping alive on their 8.8.8.8 nameserver, but that's probably just being polite. Most providers would rather block off ICMP than have to deal with the risk of getting flooded now and then.

right now several are down... here's a better link: http://www.namecheap.com/status.aspx

If you guys are looking for a free DNS service I'm building https://entrydns.net/ with a sysadmin friend.

Nice, but your SSL cert cannot be verified because you haven't installed the intermediate CA bundle: https://knowledge.rapidssl.com/support/ssl-certificate-suppo...

Out of curiosity, how would you mitigate a similar DDOS attack against your system? Do you believe that your system would hold up against a DDOS similar to what NameCheap is experiencing?

You don't support wildcard MX records and the whole MX-setup looks unfinished... :( Looks good tho

Even has dynamic DNS. Looks interesting. Does it work with ddclient?

This is not the first time and it won't be the last time. I recommend AWS's Route53. It costs a bit of money but it's worth every penny.

This is just one of the many reasons I use either FreeDNS or CloudFlare. I never rely on registrar provided DNS servers.

While I agree with not locking yourself into one company for a lot of services, I'm not sure that using a third party DNS server puts you in a better position. The Namecheap servers were knocked offline by a DDoS attack. Do you believe that third party DNS servers are more resilient to that type of attack? At least with a registrar provided DNS server, you're a paying customer and so you can probably expect some form of customer service that you might not get with a free offering.

CloudFlare is probably better set up to deal with that kind of attack because they have a paying customer base and specialise in resilient website operation, but whoever you're with, if a DDoS is big enough it'll be hard to protect against.

Amazon Route 53 is $6 per domain per year and they have a whopping 26 anycast locations and 100% uptime SLA.

Just in case you ever want to backup your Route53 records... https://github.com/Hack56/Route53-To-S3

Tnx. Another option is ClouDNS, they're also free (for up to 3 zones)

If you are evaluating 3rd party DNS, I developed a tool for testing recursive dns query latency here http://cloudharmony.com/dnstest - the test covers most major Anycast providers.

We have also created a report that summarizes and aggregates manged DNS performance and availability globally and regionally, features and pricing. It is still under development, and we intend to sell it in the future, but I'm happy to share it, and would appreciate feedback (caution it is a 10mb file): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20765204/CH-DNS_Report-12_2011.pdf - it is a good resource if you are evaluating different providers.

Wow. This is great. Thanks for sharing!

Still waiting. Unfortunately, I can't seem to transfer the DNS from namecheap to Dynect, my usual DNS provider. It keeps on coming back as "Please try again. 541."

Also, it's been on my todo list for at least a month. No excuses on my end.

This is odd, I managed to move my DNS hosting away from NameCheap about an hour ago and my domains are back up... Make sure you click "My domains - Domains - Transfer nameservers to webhosting"

Seems like even now, there are still problems. Here is a link to their blog post which they are keeping updated:

http://status.namecheap.com/?p=7309

Was wondering what was happening. At least they are responding fairly quickly to the queries.

This is why I buy domain names on NameCheap then host the DNS on Rackspace.

Can't believe they're still down. GoDaddy's revenge?

They've been having problems for at least a week.

DDOS attack http://twitter.com/Namecheap/statuses/178906079147728897

Report on their blog: http://status.namecheap.com/?p=7309

Is this Anonymous testing their hacking tool before hitting the root servers?