[NTLUG:Discuss] DNS Woes.

[Bob Byron]

Since the concensus is that GraniteCanyon is the problem, why don't
you do what I do.  I use GraniteCanyon as a secondary DNS and
my server as primary.  I think it works out better this way because
I get the most immediate control of my domain records.  I grant you,
the best solution is to have both DNS servers off site controlled by 
two independent sources, but this solution does work out better 
then having GC canyon as Primary and Secondary.  And, they are
free, so its not like you really should expect perfect services out
of them.

Bob
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Baker" <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>
To: "NTLUG DISCUSS" <discuss at ntlug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 9:47 AM
Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] DNS Woes.


> 
> I recently purchased my own domain name (sjbaker.org) and following some
> great advice from people on this list, use the 'granitecanyon' free DNS
> service to act as primary and secondard DNS for my site.
> 
> (I'm not very expert in this network stuff - so be gentle with me!)
> 
> So, I set up my machine - and I can happily ping sjbaker.org and access my
> home page from www.sjbaker.org and so on.  I'm using SuSE Linux with a standard
> install - and then a bunch of unneeded services turned off and uninstalled for
> security.
> 
> However, once in a while, I find that I can't reach my machine - even a
> simple 'ping' doesn't work:
> 
> $ ping sjbaker.org
> ping: unknown host sjbaker.org?
> 
> ...I can't reach my site from *anywhere* for hours at a time - then,
> magically it'll come back and work just fine.
> 
> I have the machine that serves the site turned on 24/7 and hooked up
> via DSL with a fixed IP address - and when I get these problems, I
> can reach it just fine if I access it by it's raw IP address - so I
> know the machine is up and running OK.  It's also the firewall for my
> internal network and I have no trouble getting out to the outside world
> through even when it's not accessible as www.sjbaker.org.
> 
> At first, I just assumed that this 'granitecanyon' DNS service (being free)
> might be somewhat flakey - but their site claims they have spectacularly good
> reliability with only an hour or two of downtime over the past several months.
> 
> These outages last for minutes or hours at a time - every couple of weeks
> or so...then they just 'go away' and the site works perfectly for weeks
> until it strikes again.
> 
> Am I doing something wrong?   Is there perhaps something my machine should
> be doing to keep the DNS entries 'fresh' throughout the network?  I doubt
> that I'm getting a whole lot of outside traffic (although from my email,
> I think I'm seeing multiple hits per day on at least some days).
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> ----------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------------
> Mail : <sjbaker1 at airmail.net>   WorkMail: <sjbaker at link.com>
> URLs : http://www.sjbaker.org
>        http://plib.sf.net http://tuxaqfh.sf.net http://tuxkart.sf.net
>        http://prettypoly.sf.net http://freeglut.sf.net
>        http://toobular.sf.net   http://lodestone.sf.net
> 
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