VM DNS Issues - Domains do not resolve.

[Stephen_U]

Hello all,
My first post here.
Unfortunately I am experiencing VM DNS issues.
I cannot resolve any of my sites or my customers sites through VM's DNS.
All my customers (who have VM accounts) have now switched over to either Open DNS or Googles public DNS and can now view their sites with no issues.
Problem is that it seems that if you are a VM customer and using the DNS defaults you cannot see the sites at all and receive 'server not found message' (Irregardless of UK geographic location)
As a result I am seeing, in Google Analytics and server logs, drops in traffic and conversions on all B2B and B2C sites.
I have contacted VM several times over this and have not received a satisfactory response - thus my post here.
As this is my first post and I do not want to be deemed as a 'spammer' - please PM me and I will provide the relevant details - IP's, Domain names etc.
I really would appreciate some assistance on this particularly frustrating issue.
Regards,
Stephen.

[Matthew]

To be honest I would stick with something like Google (8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4), they seem to be much more reliable to be honest.

[Stephen_U]

Hi Matt,
Thanks for the response.
I find myself switching between both Googles Public DNS and OpenDNS every few days.
Problem here is that my customers potential clients cannot see their sites if they have VM's default DNS. Does that make sense ? Issue first reported on the 4th of March.
OK if I PM you a link. If you can give it a test using VM's DNS - That would be great. Just trying to ascertain if this problem is actually regional.
Regards,
Stephen.

[Matthew]

Stephen,

I am not on a VM connection, but do use VM connections from time to time when I am between places.

[Stephen_U]

Hello Matthew,
Okay.
It appears that the .com's are now resolving.
Still get 'server not found' in Firefox on the .co.uk's.
Regards,
Stephen.

[Stephen_U]

I was looking at my original post - perhaps I should rephrase.
How can I get this passed upstream to VM support ?
Regards,
Stephen.

[*sloman*]

try OpenDNS 10x better

[token]

I'll bite - how do you define 10x?

[Welshchris]

i tend to find if i use OpenDNS my connection sometimes slows in the night time.

[Stuart]

I'll bite - how do you define 10x?

I've always wondered that. I have to admit, my router is configured to use OpenDNS (not because they are faster than Be*s, more that Be went through a phase a few months back where DNS was decidedly flaky and I never reconfigured my router to use Be*s again). But, I've always wondered how they can claim that faster DNS will make your net experience that much better.

Let me explain that. For each connection, the router may have to do a DNS lookup for the destination IP. Switching to open DNS may provide a 1 or 2 millisecond time saving. However, when calling up the average web page, the computer may only do 10-20 lookups. Even on a forum where there are a lot of images, it may only do 30 or 40. This is a 30 or 40 millisecond saving in page load time. Something the average human would barely notice.

[token]

Actually, even from a performance perspective, network latency (i.e. there's a longer path) probably weighs against OpenDNS compared to the DNS caches of <whatever your ISP is>.

Reliability of the service is pretty crucial though, if you suffer lost DNS traffic then overall experience of any ISP is going to be rubbish (you can't do nuffink without DNS really). Decent DNS is going to make a difference for complex sites that drag content from lots of sources - like most things, faster is better, but reliability is king. I'd have thought if your ISP is dropping DNS en route to their own caches, then going off their network for it just isn't going to help.

I've personally never seen any evidence that VM's DNS caches are anything other than reliable on here, except for individual cases where specific things don't resolve and I expect that there's normally a transient upstream cause for those.

Anyway - the nice man at GRC built a tool to measure DNS latency - as previously posted, normal YMMM caveats apply etc.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33659014-dns-benchmarking.html#post34924319

[scrooge]

Try the excellent open source namebench, much better...
http://code.google.com/p/namebench/

[token]

Chatted to the OP - the problem is with the config of his domains - not the Virgin caching platform - if the NS records for your domains don't resolve, chances are not much is going to work...