[NTLUG:Discuss] DNS Woes.

[Steve Baker]

Bob Byron wrote:
> 
> There are several things you can do to help determine where the
> trouble resides.
> 
> 1) ping by ip address instead of domain name.  If you cannot
> "ping www.sjbaker.org" and you can "ping 66.137.234.217"
> then it would most likely be an issue with the domain name
> servers.

Yes - I'd already realised that.  When I'm having troubles and
a 'ping sjbaker.org' fails, the 'ping 66.137.234.217' always works
OK.  That's what leads me to think it's a DNS problem.

> 2) Use the tools at hexillion.com.
> http://www.hexillion.com/utilities/
> Especially focus on the domain dossier, nslookup and tcpquery,
> in that order.

OK...*if* I can understand what they are telling me!

This stuff is *totally* opaque to the occasional user.  If you are
one of these people who lives and breathes network stuff, doubtless
they are wonderful.  It may take me a day of surfing README's to
even get a glimmering of what this means...then a week later and I've
forgotten it again!

> 3) Make a mental note of the how long it takes the ping to return
> "unknown host".  It could be a network issue that packets aren't
> making it back to you.  I find this the least likely possibility.  Most
> likely 1 & 2 are going to help you isolate your problems.  But, it
> is still good to note the return time.

It takes a long time for Netscape to time out when I try to visit
my site...I havn't thought to note the delay before ping returns.

I *have* tried telnetting into a remote site (I have a shell account
on SourceForge.net for example) and pinging from there - the results
are always the same - when I can't access sjbaker.org from home, I
also cannot get to it from sourceforge - and when I can get through
from home, I can also get through from sourceforge.
 
----------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------------
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