Can't access site

[MistWing]

I was wondering if someone could help me with this.  I haven't been able to access the site (www.missmab.com) for several days now.  I originally thought the site was down for some reason but, after discovering this forum, that doesn't seem to be the case.  I've tried accessing the site with both Internet Explorer and FireFox.  Both say the site can't be found.  I would appreciate any help with this.

Thanks
MistWing SilverTail

[Anker Steadfast]

Odd, works fine for me.

Maybe clear out your browsers cache ?
Or make a forced reload ?
(CTRL + F5 in internet explorer)

[MistWing]

Well, neither of those worked for me (I just tried them).

MistWing SilverTail

[Tapewolf]

It's been very spotty for me recently as well, at least on a vodafone tether.  DNS issues.

I couldn't even get to Project Future much at work, which was annoying because I sometimes stick image previews on it for Ren to look over.  Ren and Wuffnpuff could both see it while I could not, so I switched this machine to use Google's DNS servers and it's been good as gold since.

Google will presumably utilise DNS queries for questionable purposes, but I'm not doing anything sensitive on this laptop anyway, and vodafone's DNS was crappy at best so for me it seemed to be a good enough trade.  OpenDNS might be a better alternative.

However, looking at the xepher.net forum, someone else is also having trouble so there may be something else at work too.

[MT Hazard]

I've started using this to check when connection issues happen. Can't remember who first recommended it.

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ or www.isup.me

[LionHeart]

I've been having intermittent problems with it too. The other day I couldn't access Last Resort or Project Future, and earlier today I couldn't get missmab.com. (I can access all of them now - go figure. )

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I've been having intermittent problems with it too. The other day I couldn't access Last Resort or Project Future, and earlier today I couldn't get missmab.com. (I can access all of them now - go figure. )

They're all hosted on the same server. And, of course, for most of them, the DNS is hosted locally as well.

I did talk to Xepher about setting up a secondary DNS server for him, but he seemed uninterested, and with good reason - since, if the main server is down, there's nothing listening for web browsers anyway. It may happen anyway, but it's not a priority.

I should point out that I haven't had any problems at all. Also, OpenDNS has some issues where it has _every_ address auto-linking to it's own webserver, which is, to my mind, kinda defeating the purpose of negative caching entirely...

[Anker Steadfast]

Well, as mentioned I have had zero problems, but then I live in Denmark, and I reckon most else live in the US.

Where is the server located ?
Could be there is a peering issue at one of the backbone ISP's ?
That could lead to some having issues, while others would not.

[MistWing]

I just checked the 'DownForEveryoneButMe' site mentioned above and it says that MissMab is up and running, yet I still can't get it.  Plus, I had a couple of people try to get to the site, which they could.  All of which tells me that its something about my system.  Any ideas?

MistWing SilverTail

[Tapewolf]

I just checked the 'DownForEveryoneButMe' site mentioned above and it says that MissMab is up and running, yet I still can't get it.  Plus, I had a couple of people try to get to the site, which they could.  All of which tells me that its something about my system.  Any ideas?

Yes.  Go to the command line and enter:

ping missmab.com

If you get something like "ping: cannot resolve missmab.com: Unknown host", then it is an issue with your ISP's DNS server, or perhaps the way xepher.net is communicating to it since it seems to be happening to a handful of people in different countries.

What I did to fix it was this:
http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

If, however, ping returned something like "No route to host" or some other error, you may have a routing issue with your ISP or their provider.  I was going to suggest using traceroute to see how far you get, but mine is unable to trace a route to missmab.com even though I can get at the site (so someone has clearly done something to jam this kind of diagnostic.  What a twat.)

[MistWing]

Well, I asked about this problem at Yahoo Answers and someone suggested installing Google's Chrome browser.  When I did, the problem went away and I can see the site using all three browsers now.  I have no idea why that worked.  Thanks everyone

[Tapewolf]

On the Xepher.net forum:

"I think I may have found the problem. During the upgrade, I switched to a new DNS server, and it no longer supports the "alias" datatype that I was using before. I switched it to CNAMES, as almost all the aliases work just as well as CNAMES. I forgot that this technically violates the DNS RFC, so some (really picky) DNS implementations won't work properly. I've corrected this, and in another couple hours or so, all the TTLs should expire. If you continue to have problems, please let me know, as I'd really like to pin this down for good."

[Anker Steadfast]

Ah, seems that Tapewolf found the root of the problem.