jtara - 5:16 pm on Mar 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

It's still a good question to ask. Registrars DO go out of business!

Anyone here actually experience this? I know of one case several years ago where a registrar located in Florida (forget the name) went out of business. Registrants were in limbo for months until the mess was sorted out.

I'd be interested in just what happens. I assume ICANN gets involved in some way.

This is a good reason for keeping your DNS with a third party. If the registrar goes out of business, your registration is still safe with the registry, but you are unable to change it. If you were using your registrar's "free" DNS servers, you'd either be in the position of not being able to make DNS changes, or having no DNS at all, and no way to point your domain to a different set of DNS servers.

If you had your DNS with a third party, you could at least make changes to DNS.

If the DNS provider goes out of business, you can just point the domain to a different DNS provider.

Similar reasoning for not hosting your DNS with your web hosting company.

The more you spread the services out among different companies, the less risk you have of being off-line and helpless if somebody goes out of business.