Bit Of Techie Help Needed - DNS issue

[NeilUK]

Hi Guys

I'm hoping someone can help on here as I've done all sorts of google searches with no luck. Basically you just find endless forum threads on various forums with people with basically no more idea than me trying to give advice!

On here we have a lot of web designers so I am more hopeful

OK, the problem is an odd one, basically one of the affiliate programs I am with (3wayscash) the babestation guys is working fine for everyone else but me.
Banners I have on my site that are hotlinked from their site won't show up on my computer either with the editor or live on IE8 or Firefox. The sites themselves aren't loadable on any browser (server not reachable) but when other people view my site the banners are there and they can access the 3wayscash sites with no problem.

Their web guys looked into it and along with me trying on my iPhone with my router turned off and WIFI turned off on my phone we realised the issue was with my computer or router.

Things I have tried are:

Restored my computer back to default settings (total re-installation of windows)

Using cmd I have flushed the DNS

Rebooted my router

But still nothing, anyone seen this sort of thing before ? Any ideas?

[Twingo]

Open a cmd prompt and type

nslookup www.google.com
(replace www.google.com with the site that you cant access)

it should give the IP address of the site. If it's incorrect or returns no answer it means your ISP's DNS servers aren't working correctly and your solution might be just to change to a public DNS server (google/opendns etc)

[NeilUK]

Hi

Thanks for the reply

I got a request timed out result with no IP address given

If I go with opendns are there any issues security wise? I notice they have free plans and paid for ones. As it is only one site I am having an issue with I don't want to drastically change my internet set up.

The actual results given were

"DNS request timed out
timeout was 2 seconds
DNS request timed out
timeout was 2 seconds
*** Request to myrouter.home timed-out"

[Twingo]

With opendns you can get better security as you can specify what type of sites you wish to block, i.e phising sites. Other sites will continue to work as requested and the site in question shouldnt have a problem.

You can also use Googles Public DNS servers which is also very good.

How long has the domain name been inaccessible? If its just recently you could just wait it out and let your ISP's DNS eventually get the right data, if its been a week or longer, i would probably switch to a more reliable option.

[NeilUK]

Cheers Twingo

Its been almost a week, so I may go the opendns or google option. OpenDNS seems extremely reasonably priced to be fair.

I appreciate the help

[Twingo]

The free version of OpenDNS will do everything you need, no need to be handing over any money. I've set it up in the past on computers and routers, mostly to block children viewing inappropriate sites.

[NeilUK]

Cheers Twingo

I've gone the google route for now and all is well, I can access the site again

Thanks