DNS service problem?

[#1]

That's our fault.
I've just added another public comment to the problem itself.  I can assure you that it has been investigated for the last 2 hours!

[#2]

You are not alone - it's affecting us Madasafish/Greenbee cutomers too!
Some of us have experienced very poor speeds over the last couple of nights, see http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/postlist.php?Board=freenetname

[#3]

According to http://usertools.plus.net/@gateway/ I'm currently connected to the "City Lifeline, Juniper 10" gateway (pcl-ag03) and have been unable to get my mail or access any websites (apart from http://usertools.plus.net/@gateway/).
Since switching to OpenDNS I can now check my mail and access some websites but I am still having trouble with access to some sites.
Edit:
My router's log file still shows DNS failures after I changed the settings to use OpenDNS so perhaps there is more than just one problem to be fixed?

[#4]

Can someone please tell me what this OpenDSN is and how to access it. Can you please explain in plain english as I don't know what I'm doing as I'm not tech minded.
Capman

[#5]

Ah, could it be that the problem is fixed? The symptoms as I initially observed them appear to have ceased......hopefully!

[#6]

We reckon the problems are related to this. We've just disabled access to Brightview customers' webspace whilst we work to resolve the root cause.
We're still debugging but hopefully that should have sorted the DNS issues for now?

[#7]

Hi Capman,
The internet is a massive bunch of IP addresses.  For example our website has an IP Address of 212.159.8.2.  DNS servers change those IP Addresses into names.  So it changes 212.159.8.2 into a word format of www.plus.net.
Because we're obviously having trouble with our DNS servers currently, it's not recognising the nam,es that you're typing into your browser, so you can use someone elses servers instead.  OpenDNS is generally a pretty reliable alternative.
Now, to actually do this does depend on what sort of router you're using, but it's probably easier to do that on your computer.  These instructions are for how to do this on Windows XP, but it should be pretty similar for you.
Open your Start Menu and go to your control panel, then to Network Connections.  You should see something called "Local Area Connection" or similar.  Right click on this and then select properties.  Highlight Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then click on Properties again.
You should have an option to specify the DNS addresses automatically.  If you set these to 208.67.220.220 or 208.67.222.222 and then restart your computer, you should then be able to browse webpages.
I hope that's a little bit more straightforward?

[#8]