a few folks can't reach my site

[retzely]

I just moved to hostgator about two weeks ago. Ever since then, they have been a small number of people (5-6 reported) who cannot get to my site (www.squidi.net). I had them run traceroutes and they are reaching the hostgator server alright. I had them run nslookups, and it showed the correct IP address (66.246.110.247) at hostgator, I even made sure they had rebooted their computers to clear their DNS resolver cache....

They don't seem to have anything in common (different ISP's, different locations from Belgium to Alaska). So any ideas what the problem might be? And more importantly, anyone know how to fix it?

Thanks.

[vsbweb]

Cached DNS at their ISPs maybe?

If they ping your domain name they should
get a reply from your current IP. It would
be interesting to see if they resolve to your
prior IP instead.

Best,
vsbweb

[retzely]

I had a few of them try pinging... And the ping returned a DNS error. But they were able to run nslookup and get back the current IP????

[CRySSiS]

It might just be the DNS hasn't refreshed for them. But it does seem wierd that I mean Belgium and Alaska are very different places. Try getting them to view the page through a proxy. http://anonymouse.ws/cgi-bin/anon-ww...www.squidi.net it's slow but it works...

[CRySSiS]

I seem to have no problems getting to your site, I shall try it at some other place to see if I get any problems.

This site is dedicated to the talented actor Tom Welling, star of the WB's Smallville. Inside the site you will find a huge variety of media, from articles and interviews to video downloads, as well as one of the largest and most comprehensive image galleries available online.
There is also a detailed biography and filmography with information about Tom's previous roles, which include roles in Judging Amy, Undeclared, and various TV commercials.

BTW: my location is Ontario in Canada.

[CRySSiS]

Yeo works in two locations so far.

[retzely]

I have my theory that it is something about the DNS, because I have had issues resolving my domain on the ns5 & ns6.hostgator.com. But I haven't had any problems actually viewing it myself.

For an update, at least one person who was having troubles has now been able to reach my site. However, one other person reported that it started working for them and then stopped again. Many others are still having troubles.

As a test, I am going to see if the folks having troubles reaching my site are also unable to reach www.tomwelling.org. That should tell us something.... especially since we are different web servers and different name servers.

[vsbweb]

Have you asked them to try to browse directly to your IP address?

If they can see it that way (http://your.ip.address.here/~username)
that will confirm that it's most likely DNS not resolving properly.

I've run into this in the past - ISPs will cache their DNS, and if they don't reboot, manually refresh, or have a cron job to do it, it can stay that way a long time. If they can see your site sometimes and not others, it may be that their request is routed through a different DNS on a different machine that has been refreshed. It can also be a provider upstream from their local ISP for that matter.

[GatorBrent]

It's exactly as vsbweb has said...........

This happens way more then it should! On top of that there are many different variations of the problem as well.

Half the time its the visitors router causing the problem. Their router stores the old dns info from their old host. This is proven by when we ask them to unplug their router then reboot their pc the sites amazingly begins to work for them.

Thats the problem about half the people that have dns problems face.
The other half our the actual isps not refreshing dns. We have proven this many times....

The way we prove this is we have the people who are unable to reach it call up their isp and ask for a new ip address to be issued. They get the new ip address and sure enough their site begins to work. The reason most of you never had this problem before in most cases you stayed at the same host for a long time. Your isps routers never had to refresh they just kept pointing to the same host. when people have this problem changing their dns to another servers dns works sometimes. Then again in other cases they can change their dns to anyone they like including enoms name servers and their site will never work for them. The last guy I dealt with on this was in the bahamas. After everything we tried didn't work with our dns we had him change to enom's. He then contacted enom after his site still did not work. They told him his isp router was caching old dns, and it was 100% their problem. He then called his isp and they actually admitted they were aware of the problem and were working on the issue.

DNS is a mysterious thing......


Yet another reason some people could be seing results like this perhaps the rarest of the above listed is if they are put on a new server. Whenever you register dns it can take up to 18 days for worldwide propatgation. So basically a new server has been up for over 18 days but not months and their local isp takes months longer then the 18 days to pickup on new dns. There is no direct answer as everyone that has a dns issue has it for different reasons. It scares us sometimes that so many people have them but we double check and everything is done correctly on our side, and we always manage to fix the problem by ruling out all the above situations and in most cases can fix it with a simple rebooting of a router.

[retzely]

Have you asked them to try to browse directly to your IP address?

Yes. They are able to access the site through the IP directly (or using the hostgator address for the machine).

Half the time its the visitors router causing the problem. Their router stores the old dns info from their old host. This is proven by when we ask them to unplug their router then reboot their pc the sites amazingly begins to work for them.

I did instruct several of them to reboot all computers and hubs in their house, but that didn't work. Must be deeper into the network (ISP's and such).

The reason most of you never had this problem before in most cases you stayed at the same host for a long time. Your isps routers never had to refresh they just kept pointing to the same host.

Actually, the last host I was at, in 5 months I was moved 5 times to different servers, and never encountered this problem. But, of course, that was change on a smaller scale since we were moving within a DNS server.

The way we prove this is we have the people who are unable to reach it call up their isp and ask for a new ip address to be issued. They get the new ip address and sure enough their site begins to work.

One of the folks I am helping deal with this is using dsl with a dynamic IP address. He has switched IP addresses since the problem has started with not much luck. Incidentally, he also has issues where he can see the site sometimes. I guess I'll tell him to contact his ISP and see if we can work at this from the other end.

The count is getting higher... I just heard from several other people who are unable to reach the site (including from Canada and England). Are this many people's ISP's messed up? And if so, how come they don't have problems viewing websites all of the time? I'm sure I'm not the only site that has ever changed hosts. You guys are being very helpful with this situation. But I am getting frustrated with it, none-the-less. :x

[CRySSiS]

There's a possiblity that maybe, their ISPs all use the same backbone, such as Sprint. And if somewhere between their ISP and the backbone the DNS isn't getting updated, there might be a problem. Just a guess...

[GatorBrent]

What time did the serveral say they coudlnt see it. The servers apache could have been down.

Everything is setup properly if there is a problem it lies within each servers dns being new. Propagation shouldn't take months, but perhaps it does have kickbacks. Most hosts run ns1.domain.com and ns2.domain.com for all servers. We run dns off each server thus making it ns1 ns2 for one server then ns3 and ns4 for another. Perhaps their lies the problem? all name servers are new.


If it works on and off that is a propragation issue resulting from the isps router storing old cached info. If something was wrong our side it would never load period. There is something we can try here to find out if it is indeed a problem from nameservers being new.

Tell me the domain having the issue. I will then create a dns entry on our main machine that has been up / dns registered for 8 months now. After I confirm I setup the dns entry you will then change your dns to ns1.hostgator.com and ns2.hostgator.com if your people that have been having this issue now suddenly can view your site that means it is proprogation and their isps routers are slow to pick up on new registered dns. We are deffintly not trying to hide anything. those who want to experiment let me know.

[Jason]

I don't think I've had any problems relating to people viewing the site. Everything seems to be working fine for me. :lol:

[retzely]

Originally Posted by Gator_Support

What time did the serveral say they coudlnt see it. The servers apache could have been down.

Tell me the domain having the issue. I will then create a dns entry on our main machine that has been up / dns registered for 8 months now. After I confirm I setup the dns entry you will then change your dns to ns1.hostgator.com and ns2.hostgator.com if your people that have been having this issue now suddenly can view your site that means it is proprogation and their isps routers are slow to pick up on new registered dns. We are deffintly not trying to hide anything. those who want to experiment let me know.

One person reports he can only see the site from 14:30 - 19:00 (-900 GMT) everyday for the last week or two. Several others report "it's only up sometimes", but nothing more specific.

I'm willing to experiment on this. The domain with issues is www.squidi.net. Just let me know once you have added the new dns entry to ns1 and ns2 and I'll change it at the registrar to match.

[Jason]

After having the domain name working for me for a month, I'm still having many users not able to load the page due to DNS reasons. I've never experienced this with anyother hosts.

[retzely]

Once I was switched from ns5 & ns6.hostgator.com to ns1 and ns2, the problem cleared up right away. Perhaps you could ask them to move you to ns1 and ns2 also to see if that helps.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by retzely

Once I was switched from ns5 & ns6.hostgator.com to ns1 and ns2, the problem cleared up right away. Perhaps you could ask them to move you to ns1 and ns2 also to see if that helps.

That's no good. It took me almost two weeks for my registrar to manually update my nameservers. I soooooo do not want to go through that again.

[retzely]

Cool. Did you email them, or just leave a message here?

I recommend emailing.

[GatorBrent]

Added the dns zone on our main server for you tomwelling.

Just change your dns to ns1.hostgator.com and ns2.hostgator.com give it a few days and it will take affect. If you have any subdomains or addon domains you will have to contact us directly to add them to your zone now that your dns is based on a different server.

"Once I was switched from ns5 & ns6.hostgator.com to ns1 and ns2, the problem cleared up right away. Perhaps you could ask them to move you to ns1 and ns2 also to see if that helps."

That proves this is a proprogatoin problem. Some isps aren't recognizing new nameservers when they are created. My theory about the 6 months for most if not all isps to recgonize newly created name servers seems to be correct. I remember back when we started putting some people on our main server they had this problem. 6 months later nobody on that server ever says a word about it and have told us it cleared up for everyone.

[Windaria]

Almost sounds like each name server should be brought online 6 months before it is ever used then maybe? At least that may compensate for the failing of the various ISPs.

[GatorBrent]

I remember 3 months into our main dns when it was new some people were still being affected. I was personally going crazy. Thought something was wrong with the servers and everything. Then had some people call up their isps do a few things with them and it would suddenly start working.

The craziest thing is that I have never read anything like this elsewhere. It seems we are the only ones that know about it. I see the problem with a lot of my friend hosts as well. Their dns will only be few months old, and every now and then I'll go to their site and it wont work due to dns reasons.


Problem with setting them up 6 months in advance is that we don't have the ips to do so till the server goes live. I am noticing the longer its up the less people that have the problem. So 6 months is for the slowest of the slow.