Many of my users are in China and recently began reporting they can't get to my site. The site itself is not blocked, but it seems the DNS fails. I am using Linode's name servers. Can anyone recommend an alternative that isn't blocked? Zone Edit, DNSimple, or something else?

Many domain registrars throw in free DNS; perhaps yours does? If it's a .cn domain, seems likely not to be blocked.

If you have technically-knowledgable users in China, might be worth having them test to see that Linode nameservers are really the problem.

Thanks for the post.

One of my Chinese users did say that it seems the Linode name servers are blocked. Using a Chinese firewall test I can see that linode.com is also not accessible.

My domain is a .com. My registrar (Enom) does have name servers through Akamai. The Enom interface is pretty terrible. I decided to try dnsmadeeasy since they have a free trial, score well in comparisons, have a nice web interface, and have some neat advanced features like directing traffic to a server that is geographically close to the user (though I won't be using fancy stuff for now). I'm ok with the cost of $29/year if it solves my problem.

I did the switch to dnsmadeeasy about 8-9 hours ago and the Chinese firewall test still shows my site is not reachable from China (lookup result: timeout). Maybe China is just slow to update their DNS?

Does anyone have a Linode that doesn't use Linode's name servers? If so, can you try the Chinese firewall test and see if it works? I'm worried China could be blocking all IPs that Linode provides.

My Linode doesn't use Linode nameservers, and passed the tests on the Cinese firewall test site.

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sleddog

Thanks sleddog! I'll just keep waiting and hopefully my DNS changes make it to China.

Cloudflare nameservers are not blocked either, apparently (FWIW).

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Chris Bryant