OK, this time it looks like its for real. Its been down over 36 hours now, and there are some concerning and conflicting observations.
While the website's IP address (104.131.54.4) still pings and tracerts OK, its a different story with the domain registration.
The domain registration information for ISF on whois.com shows that the domain expires 2024-08-15, and we know August 15 was a date on which we had previous downtime in previous years. However, the registration was updated on 2023-07-31, which means someone has paid the bill. That is only a month ago - it seems odd to register for another year, and then pull the plug.
However, what is concerning is that whois.com also lists two
"name servers".
ns1.tribetech.net
ns2.tribetech.net
Now I would expect that if you went to the name server site website, it would take you to the domain hosts website. For example, perform a whois search of Apollohoax.net, and you get three nameservers
ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com
If you go to dreamhost.com you end up on the homepage of the web hosting company for apollohoax.net. However, if you try going to tribetech.net it takes you to a page that says "This domain (tribetech.net) expired on 01/09/2023". That is the date ISF went down. This looks like the domain for the site that hosts ISF has expired.
Now if I understand this correctly, nameservers organize DNS records, and these records pair a domain name with its IP address. Effectively, it acts as a translator to turn the domain name (
www.internationalskeptics.com) into an IP address (in this case 104.131.54.4). If the nameserver is down or not working, there is no way to find the IP address.