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Difficulties in accessing own web site

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Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Programmer
Jan 10, 2003
17,505
Scotland

I have a web site that is hosted by a commercial hosting company. Most of the time, it works fine. But often, when I try to access the site from own PC, I find that it is inaccessible. In particular, I get a message "Cannot find server or DNS Error" from IE. If I try to Ping the site, that fails too.

This is very intermittent. It sometimes happens once or twice a day. At others times, I go a whole week without seeing the problem. When it does happen, it tends to last two to three hours, after which all is well again.

For the last few weeks, the web hosting company has been monitoring the site, and they say that it has been up 100 percent of the time. I have also signed up with a third-party monitoring service. They too have reported 100 percent up time.

My question is: How is it possible that the site appears to me that it is down, but these two monitoring services cannot see that?

Put another way, is it possible that there's something wrong on my own system, rather than with the web hosting?

I would add that I don't have any problems accessing any other web site. I visit many sites a day without any unexpected difficulties.

I'd be grateful for any advice.

Mike




__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk
 
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Try using traceroute to see where in the path it's failing...
 
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M4ilm4n,

Thanks for the reply.

I should have explained that I have no technical knowledge in this area. Could you tell me if Traceroute is something I should install on my own PC, or does it run on the web server?

Also, will it tell me if a failure to access the site is caused by a problem with the web hosting company, or is caused something going wrong at my end?

Thanks for your patience.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk
 
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Glen,

Thanks for that.

I've now successfully run Tracert. I've also installed a commercial product, VisualRoute 2006, which displays the same information in graphical format.

But I don't see how that answers my original question.

My basic problem is this. There are times when I can't access my site. But the web hosting company says that the site is up and running 100% of the time. I need to know whether or not, in those circumstances, other people in the world can access the site.

Should I wait until the site appears to go down, and then run Tracert? Will that give me the information I need?

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk
 
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Is the website for your company outside the same domain?

If so, create a static DNS entry in your internal DNS and make sure all your clients use your internal DNS.
 
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faq950-2998
Try this.............

Glen A. Johnson
If you like fun and sun, check out Tek-Tips Florida Forum
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), English critic & novelist

 
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Hello Mike
It looks like the webhosting and web monitoring are monitoring your web server correctly by ip adddress of by cached DNS ip, but they may not be monitoring the DNS. Who is hosting the DNS for this site and is that monitored, the DNS you use at home or work maybe the problem.



Tony ... aka chgwhat

When in doubt,,, Power out...
 
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Glen,

Thanks for that info. The FAQ you mentioned tells me how to set up my own DNS server. I don't understand how that will solve the problem.

Tony,

I'm sure you're right. When you ask "who is hosting the DNS", how can I find that out? Would it my ISP, do you think?

And, assuming the DNS server is the problem, who else will see the same behaviour? Remember, my problem isn't that I can't access the site myself. My problem is that I want to know if other people can access it.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk
 
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Tony,

Thanks. I did what you suggested, and I got four failures:

1. Open DNS servers (Server ... reports that it will do recursive lookups.)

2. Missing (stealth) nameservers

3. Missing nameservers 2, with the name of two problem NS records.

4. Stealth NS record leakage

I'll try to figure out what I can do about all this. My real difficulty is that I don't know who to complain to: my ISP or my web-hosting company (or neither).

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk
 
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Mike,

The errors 2 and 3 are the ones I would be concerned with,
the NS records at your nameservers will point to who, is supporting your web site dns.

If you provide the domain, I could see that report too.



Tony ... aka chgwhat

When in doubt,,, Power out...
 
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Just to wrap this up ...

Yesterday morning, the site went "down" again. So I ping'd the URL, and -- not surprisingly -- got a "not found" reply.

But when I ping'd the IP address, the ping succeeded.

I then trid accessing the site via Anonymizer ( This connected to the site without any difficulties.

Next, I telephoned two people I know, in different parts of the country. Both were able to access the site without difficulty.

I think it's fairly conclusive that the problem has got something to do with DNS resolution, and that most people will be able to access the site OK.

I still don't know why I can't get to the site (especially as I have no difficulty accessing other sites), but I won't worry about it. The fact that two out of three people accessed it OK is good enough.

So, thanks to all of you who helped me with this problem. It has been an educational process.

Mike



__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk
 
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The problem is with the master name server, call your isp
which appears to be netpivotal.com but the master dns still is located at ev1.net. Dns was not transfered..

DNS Lookup: A record
Generated by at 03:49:52 GMT on 11 May 2006.

How I am searching:
Searching for A record at c.root-servers.net [192.33.4.12]: Got referral to NSC.NIC.uk. [took 18 ms]
Searching for A record at NSC.NIC.uk. [199.7.66.44]: Timed out. Trying again.
Searching for A record at NS6.NIC.uk. [213.248.254.130]: Got referral to ns1.netpivotal.com. [took 115 ms]
Searching for A record at ns1.netpivotal.com. [207.44.250.106]: Got CNAME of ml-consult.co.uk. and referral to ns.ml-consult.co.uk. [took 65 ms]
Searching for ml-consult.co.uk A record at ns.ml-consult.co.uk. [67.15.50.47]: Timed out. Trying again.
Searching for ml-consult.co.uk A record at ns.ml-consult.co.uk. [67.15.50.47]: Timed out. Trying again.
Searching for ml-consult.co.uk A record at ns.ml-consult.co.uk. [67.15.50.47]: Timed out. Trying again.
Searching for ml-consult.co.uk A record at ns.ml-consult.co.uk. [67.15.50.47]: Timed out. Trying again.
Searching for ml-consult.co.uk A record at ns.ml-consult.co.uk. [67.15.50.47]: Timed out. Trying again.

NOTE: One or more CNAMEs were encountered. is really ml-consult.co.uk.

Tony ... aka chgwhat

When in doubt,,, Power out...
 
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Chgwhat,

Many thanks for that. Could I clarify a couple of points:

You said I should call my ISP, "which appears to be NetPivotal". In fact, NetPivotal is the web hosting company. My ISP is a different company. Which one should I call?

Can you suggest what exactly I should ask them? I've already complained to the web hosting company, but I could only frame my question in general terms. If I had something more specific to put to them, I might have better luck.

I appreciate your help with this.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk
 
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Contacted teh web site with no problems fro Florida, so it is interneal. Good luck with it.

Glen A. Johnson
If you like fun and sun, check out Tek-Tips Florida Forum
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), English critic & novelist

 
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Basically, the DNS server that is supposed to be the primary server for your domain is "ns.ml-consult.co.uk" and that host supposedly has the same IP address as your website. Problem is, when I try to directly ask that server a question like "where is the ml-consult.co.uk domain?" I get no response. So I don't think that host is actually a functional DNS server.

WhoIs shows that your name servers are NetPivotal's, and querying them shows that ns.ml-consult.co.uk is the primary server. The technical contact for the DNS is netpivotal, so I'd call them and let them know that your web server is also listed as the primary DNS for the domain and is not doing well at providing that service right now, and that you think it is responsible for intermittent name resolution problems.

ShackDaddy
 
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