Thought this might help a few people (DNS)

danmed · 02-03-2008, 17:48

I'm not sure if anyone else here has been experiencing the same problem si have, but in case they have heres what i did :

The last week or two, every evening at random times i'd find the i was unable to load random websites... sometimes it was google, other times you tueb.. other times nothing would work.. I have an active ping running normally anyway which also showed no contact from google..
Normally this would go away within a few minutes but it became increasingly annoying as it began to affect my ps3 and xbox aswell.

I googled and came on here but found nothing (could be due to my searching skills leaving alot to be desired).. but then i found opendns.. its a free to use service which replaces your ISP's DNS servers..

Since using them, i've not had a single problem. They offer a few extras on top of just the more reliable DNS service, but you need to sign up (free) for those.. if you just want to use their DNS servers they are right there on the page fo ryou to input.. take a look.

www.opendns.com

techyguy4 · 02-03-2008, 18:17

Thanks danmed for the info. I hope it will help a lot of VM customers who are facing problems with certain website. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.

AdeD · 02-03-2008, 19:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by danmed

I'm not sure if anyone else here has been experiencing the same problem si have, but in case they have heres what i did :

The last week or two, every evening at random times i'd find the i was unable to load random websites... sometimes it was google, other times you tueb.. other times nothing would work.. I have an active ping running normally anyway which also showed no contact from google..
Normally this would go away within a few minutes but it became increasingly annoying as it began to affect my ps3 and xbox aswell.

I googled and came on here but found nothing (could be due to my searching skills leaving alot to be desired).. but then i found opendns.. its a free to use service which replaces your ISP's DNS servers..

Since using them, i've not had a single problem. They offer a few extras on top of just the more reliable DNS service, but you need to sign up (free) for those.. if you just want to use their DNS servers they are right there on the page fo ryou to input.. take a look.

www.opendns.com

Danmed, I've been having problems with DNS lookups for the past two weeks. I can ping with no problems and my speed is OK - can get up to 19mbps on the downlink, but resolving an address can be horrendous.

I've been looking at OpenDNS and it seems you can change the DNS addresses on your router or your PC, which method did you go for?

Joxer · 02-03-2008, 21:57

If you are connecting to your router with dhcp you are most likely using your router for dns requests so it makes sense to chabge it there as it will then affect everything connected to it - 1 change on the router versus changing every device you have connected through it (pcs, consoles, phones, pvrs, whatever...).

Sinth · 02-03-2008, 22:27

Have a look at this weird problem with opendns guys.
started last nov and comments even in the last 15 mins.
http://forums.opendns.com/comments.p...page=1#Item_32

AdeD · 02-03-2008, 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joxer

If you are connecting to your router with dhcp you are most likely using your router for dns requests so it makes sense to chabge it there as it will then affect everything connected to it - 1 change on the router versus changing every device you have connected through it (pcs, consoles, phones, pvrs, whatever...).

Cheers Joxer, I'll give this a go in a little while.

Joxer · 02-03-2008, 23:24

I get the same google errors at work and I'm fairly sure we don't use opendns - though we may send a lot of queries. It took about half a dozen captchas and the it worked ok so not exactly the same issue.

Never felt the need to try opendns I use a caching proxy dns server anyway and have never had any problems, even when that machine was forwarding the connection to the rest of the house.

Penguins rule.

danmed · 02-03-2008, 23:27

Hi, in reply i changed the DNS entries on my router and set all my devices back to DHCP (i'd set them static to try and resolve the issue previously).. hope this helps.

AdeD · 04-03-2008, 11:34

Huzzah!

Finally got a few minutes spare (a five week old son doesn't allow me much free time) and it works!

Will keep monitoring the situation, but it seems to be the best in a long time.

Now, I wonder if I ring broadband suppport they'll give me my money back for the money I've spent calling them trying to sort this out.

AdeD · 04-03-2008, 20:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdeD

Huzzah!

Finally got a few minutes spare (a five week old son doesn't allow me much free time) and it works!

Will keep monitoring the situation, but it seems to be the best in a long time.

Now, I wonder if I ring broadband suppport they'll give me my money back for the money I've spent calling them trying to sort this out.

Damn!

I think I spoke too soon, lookups are taking as long as they were before I switched to OpenDNS.....

MikeyB · 04-03-2008, 21:48

I've tried OpenDNS a couple of times in the past, and didn't have much luck with it.

I would find that a lot of the time I would have to either click on links twice, or press F5 to get pages on any website to load.

I changed the DNS settings in my router so it affected everything, and would have the problem in both IE and FF.

So back to using the VM DNS, and to be honest don't really have any problems with it.

AdeD · 11-03-2008, 20:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdeD

Damn!

I think I spoke too soon, lookups are taking as long as they were before I switched to OpenDNS.....

Fixed at last!

After lots of Googling I found a Vista issue that caused slow DNS lookups. There is a service called Base Filtering Engine, that when switched on slows look ups right down. It's not recommended to have this service switched off for security reasons, so after some more Googling led me to download Update for Windows Vista KB929547 (resolves an issue where after installing the Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) driver, applications and services appear to stop responding for approximately 15 seconds).

This has fixed the slow DNS problem, the only thing I'm angry about is that Vista told me I had all the relevant updates. Obviously not.....