topic Re: DNS Server Outages in Plusnet Feedback

DNS Server Outages

ReedRichards — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 07:31:09 GMT

When I arrived home at about 8 pm on 4th September my wife told me the internet was not working. I took a look and it was a DNS problem. I took no action and the problem resolved itself a few moments later. I experienced something similar around 8 am on Sunday 30th August. The most worrying feature of this problem is that Plusnet don't seem to be aware when it happens. It is not shown as a known service issue.
I know I could use a public DNS server as a backup (as Forum Moderator Oldjim does) but it would be nice to think that Plusnet is aware of these occasional problems and is taking action to prevent them.

Re: DNS Server Outages

matt_2k34 — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:46:24 GMT

What are your DNS Settings ?
PN (IIRC) Has two DNS Pools - If you right click on your network conncetion > Properties > (highligh TCP/IP v4) then click properties > dns settings at the bottom - if you hit advanced you can add as many DNS IP addresses as you like (on the DNS tab obviously)
if you just wanted to use Plusnets DNS servers, the IPs are 212.159.6.9 & 212.159.6.10 -- 212.159.13.49 & 212.159.13.50.
You could also throw a few public DNS servers (such as openDNS) aswell - the choice is yours!
(By adding more it will work its way down the list if the first one fails etc.)
Hopefully that stops you having any issues

Re: DNS Server Outages

James — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:08:16 GMT

@ RR
We haven't seen any mention of DNS issues either here on from the CSC for a fair period of time.

Re: DNS Server Outages

ReedRichards — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:47:09 GMT

This continues to happen to me very frequently, just now (08:35 2/11/09) for instance. According to my browser the DNS server returns a null result. Fortunately these outages only last a few minutes at a time. During the outage I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the broadband connection on my router but it did no good. However things returned to normal a few minutes afterwards.

Re: DNS Server Outages

Oldjim — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:35:10 GMT

Can you explain how your browser tells you.
The reason for asking is I have been getting a problem with Site not Found but a second try finds it.
My first DNS server is Plusnet and the second is OpenDNS

Re: DNS Server Outages

ReedRichards — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:56:22 GMT

My sincerest apologies to Plusnet - I was blaming them for a problem that is mine! At some stage early in the investigation process I had concluded that the problem pertained to all my computers but the recurring issue turned out to be specific to one computer. This is running Windows 7 RC 7100 (because I have not yet got round to installing my copy of the final version of Windows 7). Every so often, it refuses to connect to the internet after awakening from a sleep state. I still have a connection to the router and the router still has a connection to the internet but my web browsers (IE8, Chrome) lose their ability to load pages. Chrome gives me an error message that a DNS lookup gives a null result. Often the problem clears after 5 or 10 minutes.
However, latterly I found that I could still open a CMD window, run 'nslookup bbc.co.uk 212.159.6.9' (for example) and get a sensible result. I also found that the problem clears if I restart the computer. So in the end it's just some weird bug involving Windows 7 and, possibly, my computer hardware.