Popular URL shortener, is.gd, is back up, after a downtime of three days.
The Gibraltar-based company went offline on May 18th, and thousands of “is.gd” links went dead.
According to the announcement, the domain was also moved to a new registrar, KSregistry GmbH:
“Sorry for the extended downtime, we haven’t forgotten about this and the issue is still being worked on. The reason for the delay is that we’re implementing a 3rd party DoS protection service to prevent a recurrence of the same issue. This has been further complicated by problems obtaining administrative control of the domain to change the configuration (the body in control of the .gd registry has changed, resulting in us not being able to make changes via the company we originally purchased it from and our accounts with them). We’re well on the way to getting this resolved, but time zone issues with talking to the new registrar haven’t helped. I appreciate these issues and delays are frustrating for is.gd’s users. We’re doing all we can, and have to make sure we’re properly protected from further high bandwidth DoS attacks in future before restoring service.”
Other URL shorteners to consider include Google’s own goo.gl, bit.ly and ow.ly. The latter two are using Libyan ccTLDs, which some might find strange.
