23 replies to this topic

[Alan Perkins]

Is it the primary nameservers or the IP of the site itself? The answer to this will make a very large difference to me.

It's hard to nail down the exact rules - I'm not even sure they are stable. Which is why I said both name server and hosting.

One thing I would definitely avoid is having my primary name server neither in Canada nor in the US if I wanted my site to appear in Canadian results. As long as what you have works, stick with it.

[BrianR]

Going back to Tom's original question...

Doesn't it depend somewhat on where most of his customers are? If most of them are in Oz, then having a .com.au suffix assumes more importance, and vice versa if most of his customers are from overseas. Yes??

BrianR

[AussieT]

Follow up Questions.

Brian - About 47% of visitors to my site are from Australia. (although I expect this is probably higher. 22% are unresolved). As this is the largest sector, even though it is where I rank poorly.

Alan/Ian - How does a novice find out where the whether his .com primary nameservers are in Australia? AND how do I find out whether MY IP is in Australia?

Tom

[BrianR]

Ok, Tom - so let's say about 60% of your site visitors are from Oz. Question: Is that same rough % reflected in the volume of actual sales too??

If the answer to that is: 60% or more of sales come from Oz, then IMO, a .com.au suffix is the way to go in order to appeal to the locals.

My feeling is that 'buying local - from one of our own' is a more important factor for us island races than for others.

BrianR

[Cygnus]

I can't quite remember, but doesn't Australia limit domain registrations to those who live in AU, or have a legal entity set up there?

Just curious...

Cygnus

[Randy]

Alan/Ian - How does a novice find out where the whether his .com primary nameservers are in Australia? AND how do I find out whether MY IP is in Australia?

Well, I'm neither Alan nor Ian... but there are several ways you can tell AussieT, depending upon what you have available to you. The easiest way is using server stuff, but you can usually find what you want from your local PC.

First go over to Network Solution or allwhois.com and look up the domain name. They should at least tell you who the "Registrar" for the domain name is. Once you have that, just go to that site and see what the nameserver info is. The best thing to get is an IP address...so if they don't give you one (some Registrars don't list IP numbers in the public record) you could always go over to DNSstuff.com ( http://www.dnsstuff.com ) or DNSReport.com ( http://www.dnsreport.com ) to do more indepth research. One of those will always give you the IP number somewhere.

You could also try doing a Ping or NSLookup from the command line of your PC to the server/domain/ip , but that can be adversely affected by the DNS servers of your ISP so I don't recommend that route. Some ISP's are notorious for having misconfigured DNS servers.

If you're pretty sure the domain and/or nameservers are OZ based, you could always do a WhoIs search over at APNIC ( http://www.apnic.net...ic-bin/whois.pl ). That stands for Asia-Pacific Network Internet Centre, and it's basically the same thing as ICANN is in the states. You can perform an APNIC WhoIs search by either the domain name or IP number. So if it's Aussie you should find it there with full details.

If not, and especially if you have the IP numbers you want to check on, you might try one of the various IP tools available out there. Softnik makes a good freebie which connected with most of the IP repositories worldwide. You can grab that at http://www.toolsfors.../1/iplookup.htm It's a Windows application and using it you can get all kinds of info on just about any IP number.

If you still can't get the answer you need, feel free to PM me and I'll take a look from one of my servers. I have all kinds of utilities available to track down IP's and domain names since I'm constantly tracking down, reporting and/or blocking spam, virii, DOS attacks and the like.

<edited to correct a URL typo>

Edited by Randy, 02 October 2003 - 09:54 AM.

[sanity]

I can't quite remember, but doesn't Australia limit domain registrations to those who live in AU, or have a legal entity set up there?

Yes it's pretty hard to register an .au domain if you're not an Australian business. You can read the policy here.

[Alan Perkins]

Alan/Ian - How does a novice find out where the whether his .com primary nameservers are in Australia? AND how do I find out whether MY IP is in Australia?

What Randy said ...

• Use whois to find the IP address of the nameservers
  
• You should know your own IP address, but if not open a command prompt and use "ping -a domainname" to find it
  
• Go to APNIC whois and search for those two IP addresses. If they are in Australia, it will tell you.

There was a slight error in Randy's reply:

That [APNIC] stands for Asia-Pacific Network Internet Centre, and it's basically the same thing as ICANN is in the states.

It's actually the equivalent to ARIN.

[Randy]

There was a slight error in Randy's reply:
It's actually the equivalent to ARIN.

True Alan, thanks for the correction.

I should know better than to post anything that late at night after a 17 hour day. Insomnia or not.

I must have had ICANN on the brain because I was, and am, so ticked at NetSol/Verisign thinking they can just hijack DNS whenever they feel like it. IMHO, ICANN should step in and pull NetSol's ability to do anything with domain names, including register them. But that's another story.