Brit registrar 123-Reg begins 2021 in much the same way it ended 2020 – with DNS issues

Not quite what we meant by 'record-breaking'

Third borksman of the apocalypse 123-Reg has ridden into 2021 with... you guessed it, DNS issues.

While Microsoft and Slack suffered their own high-profile wobbles as the first working week of the year got started, 123-Reg's issues appear to have been rumbling since December, biting Register reader, Alan, over the weekend.

While attempting to add a new DNS entry, Alan found that his configuration had been wiped. "All that remained was a solitary CNAME for 'www' to '@'," he told us.

"Fortunately, their nameservers are still serving the correct answers."

Alan duly raised a ticket (to which he's yet to receive a reply), checked back this week and found the configuration had changed once more, "but not what I'd ever set up, including a broken MX record pointing to 'mail.'," he told us.

That trailing "." could cause all manner of problems in its own right.

The Christmas elves did their thing once more, and on his next check things had reverted back to just the "www" CNAME.

Alan isn't alone – a glance at the company's social media shows a number of users experiencing issues.

@123reg Hey 123Reg,

my mx records have disappeared and you have no support available , really?

this is a bit rubbish for a company , no 24/7? hardly google are we , unhappy customers need support 24/7 :( cancelling asap

— Damian Jones (@DamianJ95923939) January 2, 2021

For its part, the company admitted that some customers might be experiencing "issues related to DNS management". It suffered a prolonged DNS wobble back in November following what a spokesperson described as a "recent platform update" left some unable to view or edit their DNS records.

The spokesperson went on to say the error had been corrected "for the majority of customers" and urged those still having problems to contact the company.

"I attempted a few minutes ago to phone support," said Alan. "An answering machine told me the wait would be 20+ minutes."

The Register has contacted 123-Reg for its take on the situation, and why its status page is still showing a month-old problem. We will update should an explanation be forthcoming.

In the meantime, perhaps it is time to update the age-old adage: "It's not DNS, it can't be DNS... it was 123-Reg." ®