[yyin]

One of his two nameservers, ns2.missoulaweb.com (66.235.178.171), is non-responsive. The other one works but it's listed second. No round-robin. That can slow down the DNS lookup, as the first listed nameserver will likely be tried first, adding to the "slowness" of a website.

Dead nameservers are relatively rare among sites that get posted to HN, since many are high traffic and use CDNs (that rely on DNS kludges). But it is still a regular occurrence. No one ever talks about it. But it's one of the DNS kludges that's continually slowing things down behind the scenes.

There is that term "link rot" for URL's that do not work anymore. And "bit rot" for source code. I propose a new one: "NS rot".