Extremely fustrated right now.

Milambar · 16-07-2009, 06:32

This is more of a rant, than anything, but, I'd also like to know what actually happened here, so anyone knows what actually happened here, feel free to chip in.

Last night I decided to move some devices on my network around. Having done so, and having made and tested a new shortened series of cat5e cables (to avoid spaghetti junction), I powered down the modem and router waited 2 minutes, powered up the modem, waited for it to stablize, then powered up the router...

No internet. So I rechecked the cables with a cable tester. They were fine. Did the power down, power up thing again...

Still no internet. So I took the router out, and conencted directly. Powered everything down, then back up again...

Still no internet. But I did notice a curious thing, I could actually access sites if I knew their ip. Thankfully my day job is in networking, so I actually have quite a few of these memorized like any good nerd.

I put the router back into the equation and instead of letting it get the dns servers from dhcp, I explicitly specified the openDNS ones. Worked a charm, everything popped back onto the internet.

It appears I wasted a good hour and half diagnosing this, thinking I'd made an error in my own LAN networking, when, for some reason VM's nameservers appear to have dropped off the face of the earth, at least for me. The odd thing is, if I specify them by IP (194.168.4.100 I believe), they work fine too, but if I leave DHCP to configure them, they don't.

So, whats happened here? Other than me getting very fustrated. Why did the DNS not automatically configure itself as it normally does?

AbyssUnderground · 16-07-2009, 10:46

It's technology, it is bound to randomly fail. For this reason I always specify openDNS as my primary DNS servers in my router, then VM's DNS second. VM's DNS has proven so unreliable over the years that I just got sick of it and permanently switched to openDNS. I suggest you do the same too, since you'll find them much quicker and much more reliable. Being a network guy I'd have thought you'd have done that already.

zer0 · 17-07-2009, 00:08

i always find the VMs dns servers take around 45 seconds to kick in whenever changing network settings

bigsinky · 17-07-2009, 13:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

It's technology, it is bound to randomly fail. For this reason I always specify openDNS as my primary DNS servers in my router, then VM's DNS second. VM's DNS has proven so unreliable over the years that I just got sick of it and permanently switched to openDNS. I suggest you do the same too, since you'll find them much quicker and much more reliable. Being a network guy I'd have thought you'd have done that already.

agreed. both my DNS servers on my router are openDNS

swoop101 · 17-07-2009, 15:45

I stopped using opendns after reports like this:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/19...6-opendns.html

May be just me that is not happy about it, but some sites I go to do not want to be cached or logged like this.
(no they are not dodgy sites, just private members sites)

Milambar · 17-07-2009, 18:26

That is exactly why I try to avoid using OpenDNS, however, when VM's nameservers are on the blintz, they are a useful standby.