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rdhw · 06-04-2004, 13:50

For reference:

Almost all the publicly-known NTL news server addresses (e.g. news.cable.ntlworld.com, news.ntlworld.com, text.news.ntlworld.com) are all now identical aliases of news.ntli.net, which resolves to eight possible IP addresses on a round-robin basis:

news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.120
news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.121
news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.122
news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.123
news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.124
news.ntli.net internet address = 62.253.162.201
news.ntli.net internet address = 62.253.162.202
news.ntli.net internet address = 62.253.162.203
news.ntli.net internet address = 62.253.162.204

The 194.168.222 addresses are at Guildford, the 62.253.162 ones at Winnersh.

So it makes no difference what DNS name you use for the news server, you always end up at the same round-robin. Unfortunately, the round-robin on the DNS server is defeated by the DNS handling in Outlook Express, which will always re-use the IP address it used previously for the same DNS name. The only way to defeat that seems to be to quit OE and go in again.

There is also a DNS resolver cache in Windows XP, but that seems to honour the round-robin allocation. If needs be, you can clear the XP DNS cache using the command ipconfig /flushdns but I don't think this will help much.

If you are unlucky and OE picks up from the round-robin the IP address of a news server which happens to be broken at present, then OE makes it very difficult to move on to the next IP address in the round-robin, unless you quit OE and re-launch it. This is an OE problem, rather than an NTL problem.

The exceptions to the above round-robin are all the DNS names for news servers which have "cache" in their name. All of these are identical aliases for newscache.cable.ntlworld.com which yields a round-robin on two of the proxy servers at Bromley:

newscache.cable.ntlworld.com internet address = 80.1.224.5
newscache.cable.ntlworld.com internet address = 80.1.224.4

but I have no idea whether these news servers are actually working.

If you have trouble with news servers in OE, then you could try specifying one of the IP addresses in the first round-robin above (instead of the DNS name for NTL news), until you find one that works reliably.

06-04-2004, 13:50	#12
rdhw Inactive Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Cambridge Posts: 567	Re: MERGED No newsgroups server? For reference: Almost all the publicly-known NTL news server addresses (e.g. news.cable.ntlworld.com, news.ntlworld.com, text.news.ntlworld.com) are all now identical aliases of news.ntli.net, which resolves to eight possible IP addresses on a round-robin basis: news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.120 news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.121 news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.122 news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.123 news.ntli.net internet address = 194.168.222.124 news.ntli.net internet address = 62.253.162.201 news.ntli.net internet address = 62.253.162.202 news.ntli.net internet address = 62.253.162.203 news.ntli.net internet address = 62.253.162.204 The 194.168.222 addresses are at Guildford, the 62.253.162 ones at Winnersh. So it makes no difference what DNS name you use for the news server, you always end up at the same round-robin. Unfortunately, the round-robin on the DNS server is defeated by the DNS handling in Outlook Express, which will always re-use the IP address it used previously for the same DNS name. The only way to defeat that seems to be to quit OE and go in again. There is also a DNS resolver cache in Windows XP, but that seems to honour the round-robin allocation. If needs be, you can clear the XP DNS cache using the command ipconfig /flushdns but I don't think this will help much. If you are unlucky and OE picks up from the round-robin the IP address of a news server which happens to be broken at present, then OE makes it very difficult to move on to the next IP address in the round-robin, unless you quit OE and re-launch it. This is an OE problem, rather than an NTL problem. The exceptions to the above round-robin are all the DNS names for news servers which have "cache" in their name. All of these are identical aliases for newscache.cable.ntlworld.com which yields a round-robin on two of the proxy servers at Bromley: newscache.cable.ntlworld.com internet address = 80.1.224.5 newscache.cable.ntlworld.com internet address = 80.1.224.4 but I have no idea whether these news servers are actually working. If you have trouble with news servers in OE, then you could try specifying one of the IP addresses in the first round-robin above (instead of the DNS name for NTL news), until you find one that works reliably.