This weekend "the internet" played it's biggest gotcha on me in 10 years ever; I'll keep it short and it's worth a read just so your a gotcha more aware.
The Problem: Every DNS server at every major ISP on a continent (Europe) decided to throw back a "SERVFAIL" response for one of my domains. Thus the domain was unknown all through europe!
The Weirdness: All DNS for the domain was correct, and moreover with a third party (godaddy), all dns tools online are showing no problem, all your servers show the domain / dns is okay.
The Bigger Problem: DNS is fine on the nameservers, and fine all around the world, but in one continent it's stuffed, the problem isn't at your domain register, with your isp, with your hosting company, on your server - in other words it is completely and totally outwith your control; Who do you phone? It's a case when the "bit in the middle" that thing we call the internet, breaks, there is no one person or company that can fix it.
The Problem Doesn't fix itself: 36 hours on and the problem is still there, it's not getting better.
The (only?) Fix: After trying everything possible, here's the only thing that fixes it - change the nameservers, this forces the dns cache's around the internet to update and within 24 hours the record for your domain is restored world wide. thank fk for that!
Conclusion: This is honestly the strangest and most frustrating "bug" I've ever found in my life, nobody else can help you when a few thousand servers all decide your domain is no good; so a friendly heads up - you may never see this error ever, but if you do - you know what to do!
