Support

K-12 Forums

Talk with other K-12 network administrators in your state.

Or see all states.

Categories

Vanilla 1.1.4 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.

This discussion has been inactive for longer than 30 days, and is thus closed.

Domain Name System (DNS) troubles: Can't find live pages, sends me to OpenDNS Guide instead

Bottom of Page

1 to 19 of 19

  1.  
    • CommentAuthorcrocodial
    • CommentTimeJun 28th 2009
     permalink
    I have been noticing a frustrating problem as of late. I am on a site like ESPN. I go to click on the Scoreboard page, but instead OpenDNS Guide comes up and asks "Did you mean go.com (ESPNs domain). I try to reload the page and the same thing happens. Without making any changes, if I come back to it after about 20-30 minutes, the page loads fine. A couple of hours later or maybe a day or too later, the same thing will happen with another page.

    The problem doesn't usually happen with a large site like say CNN.com, but it does happen with article pages on the site. So CNN would work, but 1 article would take me to the guide.

    It is easy to say that there is a problem on the site, that the particular page is down, but it happens too frequently to be the case. And when an ESPN page is down, I should be taken to an ESPN page saying the article can't be found, which is what usually happens. So it is definitely an OpenDNS problem.

    Am I the only one?
  2.  permalink
    I have no problem reaching this page:
    http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/scoreboard

    It is possible that the site server is slow enough to respond that OpenDNS "thinks" the fourth-level domain is not there.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeJun 28th 2009 edited
     permalink
    No problem with resolving this (OpenDNS configured on the router):

    nslookup scores.espn.go.com.
    Server: speedport.ip
    Address: 192.168.2.1

    Nicht autorisierte Antwort:
    Name: a200.g.akamai.net
    Addresses: 213.155.157.27, 213.155.157.65
    Aliases: scores.espn.go.com, espn.go.com.edgesuite.net

    But seeing that they use content providers, Akamai and Edgesuite? This can be related to your issue.
    • CommentAuthorcrocodial
    • CommentTimeJun 29th 2009
     permalink
    I just used ESPNs scoreboard as an example. The problem happens very often with varying pages. Here is an example of something that happened earlier today:

    I had http://espn.go.com/mlb/ open in my web browser. I clicked on an article which brought up the OpenDNS Guide asking me if I was looking for go.com. I backed up, clicked on another article and it loaded the page fine. In another browser window, I opened up http://espn.go.com/mlb/ which also brought up the OpenDNS Guide...despite the fact that I had the very same page open in the original browser and except for 1-2 pages that also wouldn't load, it was responding and working fine.

    I'm using ESPN as an example. This sort of things happens often with CNN.com, Facebook, Digg, etc. 15 or 20 minutes later they work again.

    Based on the fact that the page works and is responsive if it is loaded BEFORE the problem occurs, it looks to me like it has to be a DNS issue.
    • CommentAuthorcrocodial
    • CommentTimeJun 29th 2009
     permalink
    okay...here we go. currently ESPN scoreboard is down for me.

    going to: http://scores.espn.go.com

    brings me here.

    http://guide.opendns.com/?url=scores.espn.go.com%2Fmlb%2Fscoreboard

    i have no doubt that this will resolve itself within the next half hour.
  6.  permalink
    OK, you have provided a longer anecdote with your conclusion, but have you done any testing? What shows in the status bar (bottom) of the browser while the connection attempt is being made?

    I'm sure someone, say rotblitz, may have a better diagnostic to try, but I'd think that running a tracert (traceroute) to the full domain accessed when you experience these problems might help to identify the point of failure.
    • CommentAuthorcrocodial
    • CommentTimeJun 29th 2009
     permalink
    The browser itself shows no errors loading the page. It just very quicking redirects to the OpenDNS Guide. This error appears at the top of the Guide: You tried to visit scores.espn.go.com, which is not loading.

    This is the tracert results:

    Traceroute has started ...

    traceroute to scores.espn.go.com.opendns.com (208.67.219.132), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
    1 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1) 0.508 ms 0.254 ms 0.233 ms
    2 cpe-76-171-56-1.socal.res.rr.com (76.171.56.1) 20.443 ms 11.519 ms 11.345 ms
    3 gig1-24.elsnca1-rtr1.socal.rr.com (76.166.6.129) 9.983 ms 17.149 ms 10.844 ms
    4 tge9-3.bwlaca1-rtr3.socal.rr.com (76.166.1.8) 38.776 ms 13.270 ms 20.277 ms
    5 tge2-0-0.lsanca4-rtr1.socal.rr.com (66.75.161.201) 24.213 ms 12.083 ms 13.183 ms
    6 ae-5-0.cr0.lax00.tbone.rr.com (66.109.6.102) 13.418 ms 60.138 ms 24.155 ms
    7 ae-0-0.pr0.lax10.tbone.rr.com (66.109.6.133) 13.147 ms 14.208 ms 12.344 ms
    8 te2-5.mpd01.lax05.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.10.249) 12.969 ms 12.896 ms 13.601 ms
    9 te8-3.mpd02.lax01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.0.217) 10.962 ms te4-2.mpd02.lax01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.6.189) 12.935 ms te8-3.mpd02.lax01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.0.217) 13.797 ms
    10 te9-3.mpd01.sjc01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.25.190) 23.965 ms 23.691 ms te3-1.mpd01.sjc01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.181) 25.927 ms
    11 te2-4.mpd01.sfo01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.149) 31.500 ms 24.127 ms 25.535 ms
    12 te4-2.mpd01.sjc04.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.2.166) 36.440 ms 37.107 ms 39.065 ms
    13 38.104.140.46 (38.104.140.46) 105.481 ms 24.749 ms 25.158 ms
    14 * * *
    15 * * *
    16 * * *
    17 * * *
    18 * * *
    19 * * *
    20 * * *
    21 * * *
    22 * * *

    etc.
    • CommentAuthormaintenance
    • CommentTimeJun 29th 2009 edited
     permalink
    Edited.
    Incorrect assessment removed to avoid misleading anyone.

    (Thanks, rotblitz.)
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeJun 29th 2009 edited
     permalink
    @maintenance
    Sorry, I must disagree. The guide only appears if there is a DNS problem. OpenDNS (as any other DNS service) has no way in checking whether or not a site can be reached, it can only try to resolve the domain to an IP address.

    Reading "traceroute to scores.espn.go.com.opendns.com (208.67.219.132)".
    Bingo! 208.67.219.132 is in fact hit-nxdomain.opendns.com!
    I.e. the domain scores.espn.go.com could not be resolved by OpenDNS at this time.
    "Nslookup" (or dig on non-Windows systems) is a better tool to analyze this sort of problem (as shown by me above already).
    Another strongly recommended tool is http://www.opendns.com/support/cache/
    If the domain does not resolve there, you can refresh the OpenDNS cache, which often helps.
    Thankful People: maintenance
  10.  permalink
    Thanks rotblitz - I guess I misinterpret the term "loading" in this case. Good to know.

    a200.g.akamai.net
    espn.go.com.edgesuite.net

    They each have a different IP depending on which resolver is queried, but all are valid. Perhaps they are not, occasionally?
    • CommentAuthorcrocodial
    • CommentTimeJun 29th 2009
     permalink
    The problem is not currently happening for me, but thanks for the suggestions...I will try those next time it occurs and report the results.

    However, you are confirming that OpenDNS is unable to resolve my URL. When this happens for me, which is fairly frequent, my ISPs DNS server has no trouble accessing the site. Is there a reason why OpenDNS has trouble? As I said, the problem comes and goes and usually lasts for about 20-30 minutes per occurrence.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeJun 29th 2009
     permalink
    @crocodial
    "Is there a reason why OpenDNS has trouble?"
    No idea if OpenDNS has troubles then, or what else may cause this. Useless to make any assumptions. This must be analyzed and measured when happening.
  13.  permalink
    Administrator
    Actually that traceroute is to the wrong place. You did a traceroute to scores.espn.go.com.opendns.com, that subdomain does not exist, so the NXDOMAIN hit lander is appropriate. You should do a traceroute to scores.espn.go.com and see both how your packets travel and what the IP address they land at is. My guess is would have landed at hit-servfail.opendns.com. Based on the time frame this could be related to the NTT circuit needing to be redirected for users hitting Chicago yesterday (check the System page at http://system.opendns.com for more details on that.)
    Thankful People: rotblitz, maintenance
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009 edited
     permalink
    @Brian Hartvigsen
    Thanks for this information and explanation.

    "You did a traceroute to scores.espn.go.com.opendns.com..."

    No, @crocodial didn't. Actually, I really think that he did a "tracert scores.espn.go.com". Why should he get the idea to use something like scores.espn.go.com.opendns.com ever? :confused:
    BUT - tracert had to resolve scores.espn.go.com, and it got 208.67.219.132! Know this address? :wink:
    Therefore I wrote above: "I.e. the domain scores.espn.go.com could not be resolved by OpenDNS at this time." :cool:
    • CommentAuthordiacon
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009
     permalink
    @rotblitz - He did do that traceroute.

    "traceroute to scores.espn.go.com.opendns.com (208.67.219.132), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets"

    The traceroute dialog does't append .opendns.com so he must have had it in there when he typed the command.
    • CommentAuthorrotblitz
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2009 edited
     permalink
    @diacon
    "The traceroute dialog does't append .opendns.com..."
    Yes, this confused me as well, but I really couldn't imagine that someone would manually append it. Could it be that he has "opendns.com" defined as a DNS suffix somewhere or somehow, and therefore this was appended during tracert's resolution attempt?...
    This also would explain all other attempts e.g. via browser, why he is landing on the guide page.

    @crocodial
    Can you post the output of "ipconfig /all" here please.
  17.  permalink
    It'd be nice to at least have the last few hops in his Tracert, unless they are all *** after hop 13.. Also what is the tracert command he used? from what operating system? Default max hops in Windows is 30 not 64..
    Operating system could help as it would narrow down places to look to fix the problem as the tracert output doesnt seem to be Windows.. at least not windows XP built in Tracert...
    Default Xp starts with
    Tracing a route to Scores.espn.go.com.opendns.com [208.69.32.132]
    Over a maximum of 30 Hops

    Not

    Traceroute has started ...

    traceroute to scores.espn.go.com.opendns.com (208.67.219.132), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
  18.  permalink
    I believe that traceroute is from a Mac, or possibly another Unix.
  19.  permalink
    it's possible they are using windows but another tool other then the built in Tracert, but knowing OS will point us at things to change or the cause for opendns.com to be appended apparently to the TraceRoute output and result..

1 to 19 of 19

  1.  

This discussion has been inactive for longer than 30 days, and is thus closed.