Hi Helen!

>
> The Midphase guy tested the four nameservers: two were OK and two seem to have died. He asked me to remove the two dead ones, which I have done. He says the change should propagate in 24-72 hours.
>
> Let's see if that helps.
>

I've checked the firebirdsql.org Domain through dnsstuff.com's online testing tool and found the following 4 problems that should be looked into. While (1) is the most problematic, problems (2) (3) and (4) only affect Email.

(1)
FAIL: You have one or more missing (stealth) nameservers. The following nameserver(s) are listed (at your nameservers) as nameservers for your domain, but are not listed at the parent nameservers (therefore, they may or may not get used, depending on whether your DNS servers return them in the authority section for other requests, per RFC2181 5.4.1). You need to make sure that these stealth nameservers are working; if they are not responding, you may have serious problems! The DNSreport will not query these servers, so you need to be very careful that they are working properly.

2.sr3.stargateinc.net.
us2.venus.orderbox-dns.com.
us2.mercury.orderbox-dns.com.
us2.earth.orderbox-dns.com.
us2.mars.orderbox-dns.com.
2.sr4.stargateinc.net.
This is listed as an ERROR because there are some cases where nasty problems can occur (if the TTLs vary from the NS records at the root servers and the NS records point to your own domain, for example).

(2)
WARNING: One or more of your MX records points to a CNAME. CNAMEs are prohibited in MX records, according to RFC974, RFC1034 3.6.2, RFC1912 2.4, and RFC2181 10.3. The problem MX record(s) are:
mail.firebirdsql.org.->news.atkin.com.->64.26.182.173

(3)
ERROR: The IP of one or more of your mail server(s) have no reverse DNS (PTR) entries/* (if you see "Timeout" below, it may mean that your DNS servers did not respond fast enough)*/. RFC1912 2.1 says you should have a reverse DNS for all your mail servers. It is strongly urged that you have them, as many mailservers will not accept mail from mailservers with no reverse DNS entry. You can double-check using the 'Reverse DNS Lookup' tool on our site if you recently changed your reverse DNS entry (it contacts your servers in real time; the reverse DNS lookups in the DNS report use our local caching DNS server). The problem MX records are:
171.182.26.64.in-addr.arpa [No reverse DNS entry (rcode: 3 ancount: 0) (check it)]

(4)
ERROR: I could not complete a connection to one or more of your mailservers:
wiki.firebirdsql.org: Timed out [Last data sent: [Did not connect]]


As is have some expertise in this field, ask me if anything of the above is unclear.

hth,
Michael