Plusnet DNS Issues

[#1]

Yesterday when I tried to access our business website https://perrydogfield.com/ the site failed to resolve with the error: "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN"

We also received messages from people trying to use our website to book, saying that they can't access it. 

However, when using my Starlink broadband connection there are no issues and the website loads fine.

So I tried changing our default primary DNS from 212.159.13.49 to 1.1.1.1 and it resolved correctly.

I had hoped that it would fix itself overnight but when changing back to 212.159.13.49 it is still not resolving our website correctly.

Since I can't exactly ask everyone connecting to our website to change their DNS settings, I'd like to know why this is happening and how to go about getting it fixed?

It's clearly an address lookup issue with the Plusnet DNS server since other DNS servers are resolving it correctly.

This only started happening yesterday Sep 30th, we've had no issues before.

Thanks!

[#2]

@Starlink666 

Although I can not assist resolving your issue I would suggest you advise those having issues with your site where possible to use mobile data on their smart phone as this would require no changes.

@MisterW 

I fear this problem may get overlooked by support on here, is there anyway you can escalate this issue?

[#3]

@Dan_the_Van yes, I was just about to check the DNS lookup myself and escalate

[#4]

Thanks Dan. Thankfully we have another booking link that we can send to customers as a work around for now. I have also tried my mobile connection EE and that also did not work. Since EE is also owned by BT I'm guessing it's a BT DNS issue.

[#5]

Here’s the Trace Route from my servers cPanel that you might find useful. It’s doesn’t make much sense to me but according to my host they say it looks like it’s not making it out of the data center.

perrydogfield.com

traceroute to 51.9.6.230 (51.9.6.230), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 _gateway (77.72.1.1) 0.609 ms 0.692 ms 0.647 ms
2 77.72.0.20 (77.72.0.20) 11.356 ms * 11.269 ms
3 77.72.0.250 (77.72.0.250) 0.807 ms 1.176 ms 77.72.0.248 (77.72.0.248) 1.417 ms
4 77.72.0.247 (77.72.0.247) 1.003 ms 0.938 ms *
5 lon-tel-01gw.voxility.net (5.254.78.149) 1.414 ms * *
6 lon-tel-01gw.voxility.net (5.254.107.86) 1.277 ms linx1.ukcore.bt.net (195.66.224.69) 1.031 ms 1.048 ms
7 linx1.ukcore.bt.net (195.66.224.69) 1.014 ms linx1.ukcore.bt.net (195.66.224.10) 0.629 ms core2-hu0-6-0-0.southbank.ukcore.bt.net (109.159.252.189) 1.311 ms
8 core2-hu0-6-0-0.southbank.ukcore.bt.net (109.159.252.189) 1.429 ms 1.378 ms *
9 * * *
10 * * *

[#6]

@Starlink666 

That IP Address 51.9.6.230 (230.6.9.51.dyn.plus.net) does not respond to a ping, so traceroute is not really telling you anything helpful.

However perrydogfield.com nslookup using google DNS (8.8.8.8) resolves to 77.72.1.41

tracert 77.72.1.41

Tracing route to jedha-lon1.krystal.uk [77.72.1.41]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     3 ms     1 ms  192.168.10.1
  2    10 ms    10 ms    11 ms  250.core.plus.net [195.166.130.250]
  3    12 ms     9 ms     9 ms  84.93.253.83
  4    11 ms     9 ms     9 ms  core1-BE1.colindale.ukcore.bt.net [195.99.125.132]
  5    11 ms    10 ms     9 ms  peer3-et3-0-1.redbus.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.16.184]
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7    11 ms     8 ms     8 ms  lon-tel-02c.voxility.com [185.242.206.2]
  8    11 ms    11 ms     9 ms  185.242.206.18
  9    10 ms    12 ms    12 ms  77.72.0.240
 10    26 ms    38 ms    19 ms  77.72.0.249
 11    12 ms    14 ms    15 ms  77.72.0.21
 12    10 ms     9 ms     9 ms  jedha-lon1.krystal.uk [77.72.1.41]

So it's not that

[#7]

Thank you. 77.72.1.41 is my server IP. Is there anyone that I can escalate this to?

I do have a call open with Plusnet support but I'm not really getting anywhere. They just told me to reboot the router and they will assign it a new IP. That's not helped, and even if it did it's not going to help anyone else trying to load the site using the same BT/Plusnet DNS which I expect is quite a few people. 

I'm tempted to try moving my site to a new server with a different IP, then hope once that's propagated it fixes the issue. But I don't know if it will, and it's a lot of hassle really. But I can't just leave it as we will be losing bookings. 

[#8]

The escalation is being investigated. The DNS lookup doesnt seem to affect all users.

[#9]

Thank you very much. I'm just glad to know that someone is looking into it still. 

[#10]

@Starlink666 has you hosting provider changed nameservers recently ?

I'm told on the escalation that the nameservers for your domain are different to those showing previously and that they have a 48hour TTL. Which may mean that the DNS change hasn't propagated completely yet.

[#11]

Not before this issue started. We have just today swapped the nameservers from our hosts cPanel setup to their cloud setup. So now they should be ns1.kloudns.co.uk / ns2.kloudns.co.uk - We thought it was worth a try since it was still not working this morning. Still no joy though, although of course the propagation might take longer. 

[#12]

Also the TTL should be 3600 (one hour). I just checked and this is what it's set to. 

[#13]

Thanks, I'll feed that back.

[#14]

Any update on this guys? Has an issue actually been identified yet? It's still not working.

I've been going through a few DNS servers to see which ones work and which ones don't.

These Plusnet DNS servers don't work:

• 212.159.6.9
• 212.159.6.10
• 212.159.13.49
• 212.159.13.50

These BT DNS servers don't work:

• 62.6.40.178 
• 194.74.65.68 
• 194.74.65.69 
• 194.72.9.38

These Sky DNS servers don't work:

• 90.207.238.97
• 90.207.238.99

Yet the following DNS servers all work perfectly:

• 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare)
• 1.1.1.2 (Cloudflare)
• 1.1.1.3 (Cloudflare)
• 8.8.8.8 (Google)
• 8.8.4.4 (Google)
• 208.67.222.222 (OpenDNS)
• 208.67.220.220 (OpenDNS)
• 9.9.9.9 (Quad9)
• 149.112.112.112 (Quad9)
• 8.26.56.26 (Comodo)
• 8.20.247.20 (Comodo)

So clearly a BT / Plusnet DNS issue. Not sure about Sky, are they using BT's DNS infrastructure? 

All of my A records have a TTL of 3600, but it does look like the parent nameservers have a TTL of 172800.

I'm going to wait until Tuesday next week, if it's still not working by then I'll try moving everything over to Cloudflare to see if that makes any difference. 

Unless anyone has a better idea?

Many thanks!

[#15]

@Starlink666 

I get your frustration, support for DNS issues has been a bit tardy for a while

Regarding

These Sky DNS servers don't work:

• 90.207.238.97
• 90.207.238.99

Looking at the Sky DNS I see message

nslookup  perrydogfield.com 90.207.238.97
DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  90.207.238.97

"Server UnKnow" suggests an invalid DNS host address or maybe Sky DNS is only reachable within the Sky network.

There is currently another thread with an apparent DNS issue https://community.plus.net/t5/Everything-else/Unable-to-access-one-website/td-p/1986804 

There has been several other over the previous months.