Eircom DSL - DNS Lookups Slow

foggy_lad

Itsdacraic wrote: »

Just a heads up, there is a possibility your IP address could be blacklisted after last weeks attacks. I am just back from a client site and there email ip had been blacklisted so they were unable to send mail.

do i get a new ip address when i restart the modem?

Itsdacraic

foggy_lad wrote: »

do i get a new ip address when i restart the modem?

This would more apply to businesses with a static ip address who use eircom smtp for their mail.

ttm

Itsdacraic wrote: »

Just a heads up, there is a possibility your IP address could be blacklisted after last weeks attacks. I am just back from a client site and there email ip had been blacklisted so they were unable to send mail.

Lets not start a panic as most Eircom users that don't have a fixed IP would find that their current Eircom IP is on a Spam Blacklist but that won't make any diffence to them UNLESS they run a mail server and if you send your mail via mail.eircom.net (or similar) use Homail, GMail etc then you don't run your own mail server and your mail will get through. On the other hand the Eircom DNS issue will stop you downloading or sending your email as you still need to do a DNS lookup to resolve the address of your mail host.

aidanodr

Hiya,

The IP address you get is a Dynamic address delivered to the Router from an Eircom Server called a DHCP Server. "It also allows many devices to share limited address space on a network if only some of them will be online at a particular time."

Changing Dynamic Addresses is at the BBnad Supplier side - Eircom. Although you could try turn off your Router for 15 minutes or more and see if you get a new address when turned back on. I wouldnt hold my breath. Its automated from Eircom DHCP Servers.

Whats a DHCP Server? Where a DNS Server translates a www address to its equivalent IP Address - what the internet can understand - a DHCP Server simply hands out IP addresses to all machines on a Network. Every machine on a Network either an Internal Network OR the Net itself needs an IP Address. A machine is Leased an address from a DHCP Server, it holds onto this address for about 15 minutes AFTER the PC is turned off. Though lease lengths can be changed.

More than likely you have a DHCP Server inside your router. If you have two PC's and a Laptop hooked up at home each will be handed an address INTERNALLY by the routers DHCP Server.

Internal addresses use a group of addresses NOT USED in the internet space - usually 192.xxx.xxx.xxx eg 192.168.2.100 - Even the router itself will have one of these addresses normally the first or last numbers in a range. A range is like 192.168.1.1 up to 192.168.1.255, made up of 4 octets, the last octet goes from 0 to 255, so for this explanation the Router DHCP can hand out up to 254 addresses to your little network besides the Routers address itself.

Using a DHCP server to automate handing out addresses saves alot of time, especially if you had to hand enter addresses per unit in a network of 200 PC's.

Finally STATIC IP Addresses are that, Static. In your internal network you could hand enter an IP Address into your PC's Network settings. The DHCP server can also be told to only hand out addresses from 192.168.1.100 up to 192.168.1.255, any address UNDER the 100 can be used as "Static" - avoids conflict.

Where EIRCOM is concerned they can give you a STATIC IP, but you will pay alot for it. This would be useful if you wanted to setup your own Web Server at home and serve your Website from there as opposed to from a Host Company. Another use is to host ones own email server.

Anyways - their now - more dummies guide edumacation

Aidan

ttm

aidanodr wrote: »

.....

Anyways - their now - more dummies guide edumacation

Is a lesson in DHCP really relevant? DNS is the issue here and while it is connected with DHCP you don't seem to have made the connection.

............gets coat

davork

aidanodr wrote: »

Where EIRCOM is concerned they can give you a STATIC IP, but you will pay alot for it. This would be useful if you wanted to setup your own Web Server at home and serve your Website from there as opposed to from a Host Company. Another use is to host ones own email server.

Er EUR 50 isn't 'a lot' - which is what they charged me for my block of addresses...

fletch

Did anyone manage to get a refund for the downtime?

ttm

fletch wrote: »

Did anyone manage to get a refund for the downtime?

You need to phone the complaints number and make an official complaint. But if your service is only temporarly down I don't think you'll get anywhere, I'll look the number up in case anyone wants to try.

Edit> 1800 200481

foggy_lad

ttm wrote: »

You need to phone the complaints number and make an official complaint. But if your service is only temporarly down I don't think you'll get anywhere, I'll look the number up in case anyone wants to try.

Edit> 1800 200481

i rang them and they would not take the complaint at first then did but said it was for reference only and no action would be taken on it! what is the point of having a dedicated complaints number that refuses to take complaints???

jelomulawin

lol, hope the opendns will finally fix this in the morning. At first, I thought the dc's were due to pr0n in this pc...such a relief knowing it also happens to every eircom users

Star Bingo

it hasn't gone away you know.. -this thread was next to one entitled 'fair play eircom'.

irishpancake

Hi folks, apparently this has started up again tonight.

See my post here for a solution, using OpenDns servers.

There are lots of posts in this thread giving instructions about OpenDNS.

Eircom DNS servers are just not trustworthy anymore :mad:

john__long

Am using OpenDNS. Still have slow connection.

Doomofman

OpenDNS has sorted most of my problems.. Still a touch slow at times... Eircom are a joke

subtle_as

down again and im just too tired/feeling too lazy right now to do open dns!

daywalker

subtle_as wrote: »

down again and im just too tired/feeling too lazy right now to do open dns!

Surely its not that hard to enter 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 in for your dns settings on your router

ttm

Strange not noticed any problem and switched back to Eircoms servers a while back ......goes away to double check, yep back using Eircom DNS.

daywalker

ttm wrote: »

Strange not noticed any problem and switched back to Eircoms servers a while back ......goes away to double check, yep back using Eircom DNS.

could be intermittent problem?

subtle_as

hah, seems to be grand again actually. dont think it was another hit at all. just slow for a bit. or eircom saw what went wrong straight away and fixed it cos mine is back to normal again!

The Black Oil

Yeah, seems steady enough again now.

foggy_lad

i wonder is this going to be a regular feature of the eircom service now?

cardol

karlr42 wrote: »

No, DNS is a service that translates a human-usable address like "boards.ie" into a machine-usable IP address like "89.234.66.107"(put that in your address bar and see what happens). That's all it does, respond to queries, it doesn't actually direct you to any sites or serve any content. It's the equivalent of looking up a phonebook when you know somebody's name but not their number, not the equivalent of calling them.
But in order for your PC to actually get to the stage of looking up the DNS server, you need to be connected to the internet(given an IP address of your own), which is one of the services your ISP(eircom) provides. Eircom gives you some sort of presence on the internet by assigning you an IP address and some bandwidth(a physical channel to communicate over), once you have this, to browse the net your PC simply looks up DNS for "boards.ie" to get the server address, addresses a message to that server, and gets sent back the site with all its rich creamy content.
The problem here with Eircom tonight and last night is that the DNS servers are either not working or reporting wrong addresses. Switching to other servers like OpenDNS is perfectly valid, it's like using the Golden Pages instead of the Eircom phonebook, but you still need the phone!

One of the best explanations of OpenDNS I have ever read! Thankyou.

Hank Scorpio

my net was down for bout 2 hours there, jeeez you would think engineers would tell the "technical staff" so i wouldnt be forced to run through all the crappy procedures!

cardol

Hi boards.ie. I am changing to OpenDNS right now, having printed off the posted tips first(!), but in Expert Mode/Config/Connection I'm not sure I should overwrite the Primary & Sec settings because both are already: 0.0.0.0 Static IP Address and IP Gateway are the same. Shouldn't they be the normal Eircom settings (213.94.190.etc)? Thanks in advance, Cardol

Hank Scorpio

no there 0.0.0.0 by default, just put in the open dns IPs and restart your router

cardol

I've done that, restarted my router and everything is working A-OK. Thanks for getting back to me

dacogawa

Anyone having trouble tonight ?

Everything was very slow or not connecting, so i went to open dns and its all working fine again

Anyone else having trouble ?

john__long

Some minor trouble tonight in some areas.

accensi0n

I was.

Switched DNS server to 4.2.2.2

Red Sleeping Beauty

Yep , extremely slow tonight, pages not loading etc.