Internet Problems

Adders · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 22.11

Today, I've noticed problems whilst trying to access several websites. Including msn.com bbc.co.uk and google.com

Is this a problem with my ISP or is anyone else experiencing similar problems?

Chris · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 22.27

Who's your ISP?

Nick Harvey · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 22.32

More to the point, what, exactly, are your problems?

Then we might be able to have a guess at whether we've had anything similar.

Parts of the BBC site appeared to be a bit slow early this evening, but that's about all, and isn't that unusual at that time of day.

Bail · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 22.35

Mine's been much the same, most sites work if you refresh hard enough, although it point blank refuses to connect to eBay. I'm on an ntl dsl connection.

Adders · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 22.37

I'm on ntl

Nick Harvey · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 22.37

Bail wrote:although it point blank refuses to connect to eBay

That'll cut down drastically on the spam, then, eh?

Psythor · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 22.39

I'm on NTL, and there's been loads of DNS problems this evening- not being able to sign in to MSN, and Google, BBC News not working, among others.

An way around this (and I've no idea why this is working but websites arnt) is going into a command prompt (Start-->run-->type "cmd" and hit enter), and pinging a domain ("ping google.com") and copying the IP address it finds and pasting it into your browsers address bar. eg: http://64.233.167.99

Neil Jones · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 22.56

Psythor wrote:An way around this (and I've no idea why this is working but websites arnt) is going into a command prompt (Start-->run-->type "cmd" and hit enter), and pinging a domain ("ping google.com") and copying the IP address it finds and pasting it into your browsers address bar. eg: http://64.233.167.99

Because when you type in http://www.google.com all your web browser does is go to another computer and ask "where can I find google.com?".

This other computer says "you'll find it at 64.233.167.99" and off your browser goes to google.com.

This type of internet problem usually means your ISP's DNS servers (the computers that your web browser ask where to go to find a website and it gets the numbers from) are either overloaded or not working. Whereas typing in http://64.233.167.99 tells your browser exactly where to go and it doesn't need to pester the DNS servers.

Psythor · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 23.16

But why do the DNS servers resolve a domain via ping, rather than through the browser on the same computer? Surely the process is the same?

"Tell me where google.com is"
"It's at 64.233.167.99"

Only then the browser would say "go to 64.233.167.99"?

Or am I missing something?

chinajan · Tue 07 Mar, 2006 23.42

I'm on ntl and have had similar problems tonight.

Hmm, great contribution from Jan, there, then.

Charlie Wells · Wed 08 Mar, 2006 07.18

I'm also on NTL and had the same problems last night. Looks like everything is now back to normal now.