Fixing DNS issues.

Jan 25, 2010 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

Problem

You cannot connect to certain sites.
You can ping IP addresses on the internet but you cant ping some or all domain names.

Background

DNS look ups are basically where you give your computer a domain name like google.com and it resolves it to an IP address such as 216.239.59.137. Generally you will have two or more DNS look up servers. These are generally given to you by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Solution

If your ISP is having problems with their Domain Name Servers (DNS) for short, you may want to consider using a service called OpenDNS. This service does exactly what your ISP’s DNS servers do. You will continue to have a primary and secondary DNS server but instead of looking up names using your ISP’s servers, you’ll use OpenDNS instead.

First, go to www.opendns.com and create an account. When your done, you will see instructions for adding the DNS servers to all versions of windows and Linux. If you continue down the page, you’ll also see a heading for geeks. Here, you will find the primary and secondary addresses. Keep these somewhere for a moment.

To configure Windows, Just follow these really simple steps.

  1. Go to run.
  2. Type the following Without the quotation marks: “control netconnections”
  3. Are you using wireless to connect to the router? If so, go to Wireless network connection with your mouse / arrows. If your using a wired connection, find Local area connection..
  4. press alt and enter if your using the keyboard, or right click on local area connection or wireless connection then click properties if your using a mouse.
  5. If using the keyboard, press i until you land on Internet protocol TCPIP. If your using Windows 7 or Vista, you’ll see IPv4 TCPIP or something like that. If using the mouse, click on this. NOw, press alt p for properties. If your using windows 7 or vista, press alt and r. If using the mouse, click on the properties button.
  6. Tab once to the radio button for obtain DNS IP address automatically and press the down arrow once to select Use the following DNS IP address. IF your using the mouse, click on this option.
  7. Tab to the primary dns field or left-click on it.
  8. Now, type the Primary DNS address that you got from the OpenDNS site.
  9. Do the second for the secondary DNS address. Just tab to that field or click on it with the mouse.
  10. When your done, click the OK button, then at the network properties, click close.

Right, that’s the hard bit done. Now, you just need to flush your DNS cache.

Your DNS cache is a local log of addresses that have been looked up. This cache reduces the amount of look ups that are carried out. However, when your change your DNS server due to problems, you need to remove this cache so that at the start, all further look ups are sent out to the primary or secondary DNS servers.

Doing this is really simple.

  1. Go to run.
  2. Type “cmd” and hit enter or click ok.
  3. In the resulting command prompt window, type the following without the quotations: “ipconfig /flushdns” and hit the enter key.
  4. Now, type exit.

Your done.

Close any and all Internet Explorer windows open at the moment and try going back to a site you previously couldn’t access.

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