DNS experts? Problems during the day with int sites

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Globetrotter

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Jul 4, 2005
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Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Hi
Whenever I try and load www.news.com during the day, I cannot load the site. I can load the site if I type in news.com.com (sometimes), or if I use Telkom/SAIX's proxy server in my browser.
However... loading that site directly is very problematic. I eventually get a "504 Gateway timeout" error. Yet others can load that site without any problem. I'm not interested in loading the site using an IP address, because I'm trying to resolve a (possible) DNS issue here. I'm just using that site as an example.

I assume it is a DNS issue because I can load other websites, albeit it slow during the day, and local sites load fast.

I'm on a Shaped SAIX account with WebAfrica. Initially I used WebAfrica's Primary and Secondary DNS servers (196.43.46.190 and 196.43.38.190), but since that didn't help, I called WAfrica support and they didn't seem to have a problem but also didn't exactly go out of their way to help either.

I then called Telkom's helpdesk and they gave me following set of DNS servers to use:
196.25.255.34
196.25.255.3

I also have the following set of DNS servers that I got from someone else:
196.25.1.1
196.43.1.13

I still can't load www.news.com with any of these DNS settings.

I assume I'm doing something wrong.
Must I reboot the router every time I change the DNS IP addresses on the router?
Or can I disconnect and reconnect only? Without rebooting?

I entered the DNS server IP's manually in the router and have the PC's LAN Properties set to 'assign automatically'.
Since one can enter the DNS server IP's manually on both the router and the PC, which one takes preference? Or put another way, if I had one pair of DNS IP's set on the router and a different set of DNS IP's set on the LAN Properties on the PC, which DNS IP pair would be the active one?
Is there any way I can determine which DNS IP's I'm reallllly using? Some sort of external test? (Instead of flushing the DNS all the time and assuming the set DNS IP's are the active ones)

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
Last edited:
If you open a command prompt and type:

ping www.news.com

Do you get an IP address?

The "504 Gateway Timeout" you're getting is the saix transparent proxy. I really wish they would disable it because it makes a few things impossible for me.

You also don't say what OS/browser you use. If you're using IE and it tells you it's a DNS error, it probably isn't :-)
 
I get:
Pinging c17-sha-redirect-lb.cnet.com [216.239.113.101] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

I can load 216.239.113.101 successfully. It loads www.cnet.com
If you then click on the "News" tab (which is where www.news.com is supposed to take you in the first place), it takes you to news.com.com, which also loads successfully (sometimes). But I still cannot load www.news.com and it bothers me that I can't load it but others can. Why am I sitting with a DNS issue?

I use IE6 and/or Maxthon 1.5.2 (which is an IE shell)
 
I also use:
196.25.255.34
196.25.255.3

and the site is loading just fine, so I'm guessing it's not the DNS settings
 
im very interested in how the HELL www.news.com.com works, cause im on IS and just thought lemme try open in ie and it opened fine, so i thought maybe ie just forgets the second .com so i tried google.com.com but didnt work, so i pinged www.news.com.com and got a reply and a resolve, im sure someone added the records on the dns server wrongly.

Would be interested to know how this is possible...
 
well im guessing they must own the com.com domain as the news.com.com would be a subdomain of com.com :D
 
Yeah - they're both owned by cnet - bet they paid a bomb for them.
 
Globetrotter said:
I get:
Pinging c17-sha-redirect-lb.cnet.com [216.239.113.101] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Click to expand...

You get an IP address, thus DNS is not your problem The fact that you get a "Request timed out" has nothing to do with DNS. It could be anything. The webserver could have a firewall that simply doesn't respond ICMP packets (i.e. ping).

For what it's worth, I can routinely not open ZDNET news site. Maybe they just don't give much priority to connections coming from outside their country. It wouldn't be the first time.
 
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