| Furious about new Grande Dead Domain Redirect! This is absolutely unacceptable--Grande has sold its customers out in an attempt to make a buck.
I switched to Grande because it offered a "pure internet" experience. No throttling of ports, no back-end monkey business that interfered with my ability to telnet, access my servers, use secure connections, maintain firewalls.
Now, they have IMPLEMENTED THE DREADED "DEAD DOMAIN REDIRECT" pages. This is a major slap in the face to its customers and a major problem for anyone who needs to get detailed error messages or access protected networks. Essentially, what they are doing is this: when you type an address that is not recognized by their DNS server, grabbing the error that the server kicks out, and redirecting you to a page of advertising that they claim is "to help you find the right site." This causes a wide variety of problems with email, running diagnostics on websites, and logging into protected networks.
Please, if you are a Grande customer, please read the following, and call Grande at 512-220-4600 to complain about this immediately.
If you click "Why am I here?" on the ad page, it tells you that you can "Opt Out"--which is ridiculous. It will not stop the redirect; it simply puts a cookie on your PC, and you will still get the page, just without the ads.
The other option they may offer in the future (which Earthlink tried to do when they were flooded with complaints) is to have irate customers use a special DNS server. However, by entering manual DNS server settings on your PC, you'll encounter massive problems any time you use a network that is outside of your home. Good luck using your laptop internationally, through a pay service, or on a secure corporate network. You'll have to reset the DNS every single time you want to use your computer at home--and on top of it, the settings can get picked up by your wireless router, and screw up your settings even after you dump your greedy ISP.
So please call them to complain--it's the only way we can get Grande to stop this.
Tell them it is a betrayal of its customers' trust.
Explain that it causes a wide variety of technical problems.
Tell them that their "Opt Out" cookie is a joke and doesn't resolve the technical problems in any way--they are still grabbing the error and redirecting, which presents problems for people who are logging in with computers that are also used on other networks.
Explain that this behavior mimics "browser hijacking."
Tell them that offering a "separate DNS server" in the future, which other ISPs have tried, is completely unacceptable. They need to stop this so-called "feature" immediately. As discussed above, this causes massive problems for people who use laptops outside their home.
Refer the representative (who probably does not know about this new problem) to the comments by irate Earthlink customers who left EL in droves because of how Earthlink dealt with this issue.
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthlink#Controversy
»blogs.earthlink.net/2006/08/hand···ns_1.php |
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| Are you serious? Waste my time and harras phone people just because you can't type the right web address? Come on man get a grip. |
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| reply to skiro
It seems this is what every does these days. I noticed this when I first brought my service online. However, I've run my own DNS for years since dealing with ISPs who had frequent outages of their name servers.
I don't like it anymore than you do but good luck getting people to understand why it is bad.
1) run your own nameserver
1a) this is a piece of cake on linux (esp on Debian):
apt-get install bind9
change /etc/resolv.conf to "lookup file bind" or nameserver 127.0.0.1
DONE
or
2) use someone else's (even the cheap linksys routers let you specify different dns to hand out to dhcp clients)
Most name servers on the net are run allowing recursion. This seems to be especially true for education institutions. |
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| reply to skiro
I just called today....will it do any good? Who knows. We will wait and see.
I hope more people call to complain about this unwanted service. |
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JoseRZ
join:2002-01-21
Corpus Christi, TX | reply to skiro
For me I keep getting kicked to this page for websites I know that are live. I keep having to type in the address several times. |
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| reply to skiro
I like Grande, I too was surprised when I saw they started using the redirect to their search page.
However, there's a really easy way to turn it off. Simply block access to search.grandecom.com
I did it via the existing access restrictions in my router. You could also do the same thing via your hosts file by pointing it back to your loopback address.
This way, if I mistype an address, I simply get an error message (like I should have). The error's coming from my router rather than a 404 from Firefox, but either way I'm not being redirected to their search page. |
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| RE: I did it via the existing access...
Could you please explain in simpler terms for someone who is router illiterate? I hate this Grande redirect service!!! |
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| It really depends on router make/model and how the firmware is set up.
On my router, you can establish an "Internet Access Policy" with which you can do things like:
- Specify which PCs can and can not reach the internet.
- Specify times of day for which the internet will be unavailable.
- Block the internet by website address (URL)
- Block the internet by protocol
(and so forth) |
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| reply to skiro
Thanks for the info. I did contact Grande. In answer I received one cc: from the business dept to the residential dept stating this was a residential problem, then another cc: from residential dept saying no that it was a problem for the business dept. The phone tech didn't have a clue other than delete cookies and bypass router. So much for Grande customer service I've been so loyal to all these years. I couldn't even get to my own business website for awhile! Wondering if I lost sales from any Grande customers who couldn't get there either. If it happens again, I'm gone. |
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| reply to skiro
If you call Grande tech support and tell them you need an alternate DNS server to bypass the Error Domain Redirect, they will instruct you on how to do this.  |
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| reply to skiro
Unfortunately this only creates new problems when you hard-code in a new DHCP server. So it's not a solution--this is the same runaround that all the other ISPs have been pulling.
Also, my Grande seems to be dropping domains a lot, even ones that I know work. They will not resolve then suddenly resolve 2 minutes later. No one at Grande knows why. |
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| reply to skiro
You are definitely angry, though I'm not quite sure why. Firstly, this practice of serving up the "dreaded dead domain redirect" has somewhat become the defacto, as far as ISPs go. Time Warner does it. AT&T does it. IE would do it on the client side by default. Hell, the little telco office that I had DSL through in the boondocks did it. It's not all that special.
In most cases, it's transparent to people. In most cases it does indeed help people find what they were looking for. I know I personally don't care for it, but being that it's such a little thing like the DNS server, something that you're not even bound to and can change if it really bothers you all that much? Come on..
The only people who would have problems with this type of service are people who have a fundamental understanding of how the internet works, and even at that point, have situations where this type of service would cause errors. But then again, these individuals would be the type of people who would setup their own DNS servers instead of bitching at someone to do it for them. I know I did.
Pretty much, you're making a big deal over nothing. I look at ISP provided DNS servers the same way I look at ISP provided email. My ISP has email service included with internet service, but I rather use a third party provider because I don't like having their name attached to my email address. As for DNS, I like having faster quarries and faster updates to the cache, so I use my own server. If it bothers you so much, use another DNS server instead of harassing tech agents on the phones. |
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