Site coming and going - BT problem?

[Guidepost]

Hello,

For the past three days, my site has intermittently been down for (as far as I can tell) fairly short periods of time.

I have contacted my hosting company who have no issues with the server, and have said that "we have been advised that BT are having issues with their name servers and keep dropping zone files which results in sites being unavailable". I use BT as my ISP.

I have contacted BT, who tell me they don't have a problem.

When this happens, it is only my site www.guidepost.uk.com and the host's helpdesk login page which are unavailable as far as I have tested - all the other sites I have are OK.

Is anyone else having this problem? If so, any idea of the cause / solution?

Thanks,

Rosalyn

[Mike Hughes]

There appears to be some kind of general problem with dns recently, which may be related to new dns protocols not working nicely with badly setup name servers.

See the discussion on this BT thread: http://community.bt.com/t5/BB-in-Hom...-p/7624/page/9

It does seem to suggest the problem is with .co.uk domains but .uk.com may suffer worse without anyone noticing due it's relatively rare use.

The details and how to test are all bit too much for me. Someone who knows how to work with dns may be able to give a better answer.

Mike

[pinbrook]

To resolve the issue on your own PC/network we recommend people use an openDNS service ie http://www.opendns.com/start/

By doing this you take BT out of the loop and perform your DNS lookups at openDNS instead.

This of course fixes the issue for yourself bit not for your customers

[Darren B]

I agree with jo, try open dns or use googles dns servers in your router and see if that helps.

one thing if you have a static ip with bt you might find you cant change the dns servers allocated to you.

A tip for you, join twitter then mention your problems to @btcare, your get a response and someone will contact you.

[Guidepost]

Hi,

Thanks for your replies - the problem seems to have been resolved (not through any action I have taken) - I didn't have any problems yesterday, or so far today.
Very handy tip regarding BT - bound to come in useful at some point!