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Website Integrity
Article 1: What to do if we can’t reach your authoritative Domain Name Server (DNS)
Problem:
We can’t get an IP address for your site because we can’t reach your authoritative Domain Name Servers. In a browser this would appear as a “DNS error”.
Background:
The DNS test ensures that the IP address of your web site is available to people who want to visit your domain. When they type your domain name into their browser or click on a link to your site, their browser looks up your IP address on their local Domain Name Server (DNS). Unless someone has used his or her ISP to connect to your site in the past few hours, the local DNS server will ask for an address from your “authoritative” DNS server. This is the DNS server that is registered with the official name service at InterNIC (http://www.internic.net/whois.html).
If we reported a communication error in reaching your authoritative DNS server, it means that we could not reach the server through either of our ISPs. This means either that both the primary and backup DNS servers are not responding, or that there is a communication break somewhere between our data center and the DNS servers. To help you diagnose the problem, the error we received and the router that reported the outage are included in the outage message.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Checking whether you can visit the site using a browser such as Internet Explorer is not a sufficient way to test the DNS for your site. Your browser will cache the last known IP Address for your site, and so will your ISPs DNS server. Even during a complete DNS outage, some people may be able to visit your site for up to 24 hours by using cached values.
Possible Reasons:
- 1. Your authoritative Domain Name Servers are down.
- 2. There is a router failure or route broadcast problem at yourISP.
Recommended Action:
Step 1. Have you changed ISPs recently? If so, we may be checking the wrong authoritative name server.
If you suspect we may be checking the wrong authoritative name server, it’s easy to confirm the information. To look up the official record of your name server visit http://www.internic.net/whois.html and type in your domain name with the extension but without www on the front.
Step 2. We have attempted to reach the name server through both of our ISPs, so the problem is likely with one of your ISP’s routers or at the name server itself. The location of the outage may be obvious from the Error and Router information in outage message we sent.
If your ISP has a backbone problem they are hopefully already aware of the problem, but if the outage continues you should bring the problem to the attention of the administrator of your Name server, usually your ISP. The outage message we sent should contain all the information they need to investigate the issue.
As with all errors, if we can be of help resolving your problem please let us know by email to support@brandprotect.com or by calling toll-free (800) 724-4724 from within the United States or Canada, or (416) 269-7744 internationally.