Telkom Fibre / ISP - DNS problems

[Olddude]

I have and had problems with Fibre - Openserve + Telkom as ISP at both my houses (just moved last month and Telkom/Openserve installed Fibre) in Pretoria. Both houses are within 5km
With both installations I get (got) continual messages "This site can’t be reached - www.XXXX.yyy Server DNS address could not be found." Previous house - D-Link router; Now ZyXEL Router.
When I complained at my previous house, Openserve came out and they got the same message for the same sites using their PC and then contacted a specialist who changed something on the router or Telkom Server site.

This time I have again raised a service request using Telkom Call center and got a reply to send a mail to hostmaster@telkomSA.net . I did that with no acknowledgement or reply.
If I have a Voda dongle running at the same time then - Great !! it connects via Voda then switches to Fibre ( traffic shown on Win10 Task Manager). Seems stupid to have to use a Voda dongle to be able to use Telkom Fibre.

Any ideas as to the problem ?

 

[PBCool]

Have you tried using Google's recursive to see if it is DNS related?

 

[Genisys]

Best DNS servers to use is the Google DNS servers.

 

[Olddude]

I havn't tried using Google's recursive as I am not clued up on it - How do I use it ?

 

[coop]

I havn't tried using Google's recursive as I am not clued up on it - How do I use it ?

You need to login to your router and set the DNS servers there, usually on the same page as the DHCP server settings. the required DNS servers are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

this page has an example from a Zyxel router https://support.opendns.com/hc/en-us/articles/228008087 but it may be slightly different on your mdel.

 

[Olddude]

Hi coop & Genisys,
Google's DNS Servers worked like a dream. Pages open in less than 1/2 the time and the 4 sites that I could not open with the Telkom settings opened without delay.
Thanks Guys. You have saved this BC old man some hassles.

 

[mithrandi]

Just make sure to keep this change in mind as something for future troubleshooting, Google's DNS servers may well outperform your ISP's servers, but you may also get routed to a wrong CDN node etc. as a result so if you have weird issues in the future you would want to test swapping back to your ISP's servers as part of your troubleshooting.

(For example, back when I was on MWEB ADSL, using MWEB's DNS servers I would get directed to a YouTube content server hosted on MWEB's network, whereas using Google DNS would get me servers in South America(?!) and other such silliness)

 

[PBCool]

Just make sure to keep this change in mind as something for future troubleshooting, Google's DNS servers may well outperform your ISP's servers, but you may also get routed to a wrong CDN node etc. as a result so if you have weird issues in the future you would want to test swapping back to your ISP's servers as part of your troubleshooting.

(For example, back when I was on MWEB ADSL, using MWEB's DNS servers I would get directed to a YouTube content server hosted on MWEB's network, whereas using Google DNS would get me servers in South America(?!) and other such silliness)

Yeap this, it will bypass all the on-net content of your ISP.

 

[Olddude]

Thanks for the advice. I will wait, in hope, that Telkom actually responds to my mail to them. I know that they have an alternate DNS server which solved my problems and started with 196.xx, so I assume was a RSA DNS server.
Getting them to respond is the problem.

 

[ponder]

Thanks for the advice. I will wait, in hope, that Telkom actually responds to my mail to them. I know that they have an alternate DNS server which solved my problems and started with 196.xx, so I assume was a RSA DNS server.
Getting them to respond is the problem.

http://www.saix.net/cgi-bin/saix_dns.pl

 

[Olddude]

Thanks all.
Guess what - Telkom finally came back to me today with a support ticket. Bit late but at least they tried.