X-tier Systems Architects & Engineers is committed to you as your full service technology partner. You may contact our support team by email or phone but we must have a Support Case Number first. Please click on the Report or Request links shown below and fill in the Support Case Form provided on that page. Support Links Issue Reporting Feature Request Knowledge Base Our on call Customer Care Engineers are available 24 hours a day to answer your questions. X-tier SAE 4745 W. 136th Street Leawood, KS 66224 On Call Support: (+1) 888.851.8661 Available Monday-Friday, 24 hours Corporate Toll Free: (+1) 888.723.7313 Corporate Voice: (+1) 913.402.6064 For Billing, Personnel & Operations: Ext. 1 For Engineering & Security: Ext. 2 Available Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m to 5 p.m. CST Contact Us: Click Here DNS Information Primary NS Secondary NS X-tier Name Servers IP Address NS1.X-TIER.NET 75.31.190.204 NS2.X-TIER.NET 75.31.190.205 "My EVE™ iPortal is available sometimes and other times is not?" DNS Technically Speaking: DNS is an acronym for the Domain Name System (DNS) which is a distributed Internet directory service. DNS uses thousands of DNS Servers (business-grade computers) to expose translation services that transpose between domain names and IP addresses and control Internet email delivery. Most Internet services rely on DNS to work, and if DNS fails, web sites cannot be located and email delivery stops. DNS in English: DNS is an area which causes a great deal of confusion for the technical and non-technical alike. Before going any further let's look at a quick analogy: DNS can be considered similar to that of a phone book. When you move from one location to another, your first and last name usually stays the same. However, your phone number may change. For you to receive calls to the new number you must contact your telephone service provider. In turn, they will assign a new phone number to you and update their directory with your new information to show your new phone number is now associated with your name. A Domain Name Server (Name Server) acts like a large telephone directory in that it is the master database that associates a domain name (like a person's name) such as (www.x-tier.com) with the IP address (like a phone number) assigned to the name. Therefore when someone enters www.x-tier.com your ISP’s computer network looks to their DNS server(s) or others and basically poses the question "how do I contact x-tier.com?" The ISP's DNS server(s) or others respond with "it can be found at: 75.31.190.204." This can be considered the "phone number" for the server which houses the www.x-tier.com web site. Understanding DNS Propagation Continuing with the "Phone Book" analogy above...once the information in the phone book has been changed the new changes do not show up until the phone book with the new information is republished. So too DNS. When DNS settings change these new settings must propagate throughout the world's DNS servers. This means every ISP (Internet Service Provider) must update their DNS records to reflect these new changes; which in most cases, is done automatically every 24 hours. In some cases the propagation process could take as long as 72 hours to complete. During this time the "World Root Name Servers" (World DNS Servers) will check all of the various Domain Registrars for updates. Doman Registrars are companies who store and relate the domain name and IP information to each other. Once the Root Name Servers have done their job the burden falls to the many ISP providers who "should be" updating their DNS records (at least every 24 hours), but many are slow in this regard. Therefore if your ISP is having an issue with their DNS servers or the Internet's Root Name Servers are experiencing issues with incorrect data, it is quite possible that your web site is up but the DNS servers providing you with the information to your site have not been updated or are experiencing issues. In this case you should contact your ISP. Most DNS problems are resolved within 72 hours.