Eircom DSL - DNS Lookups Slow

JeanClaude

Cheers for the tip lads, switched to opendns and i'm up and running again, thank God, between last night and tonight i was so frustrated i was close to throwing the computer out the window.:D


Would the Gardai have shown me the same sympathy...:D

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32940/118/

Man throws his computer out the window, police sympathize
Business and Law
By Mark Raby
Tuesday, July 17, 2007 13:51
vote
nowBuzz up!

Berlin (Germany) - A German man became so frustrated at his computer that he threw it out of his window, and the police reaction was essentially "we understand".

A classic comedic antic was brought to life when the 51-year-old man said he became "annoyed" with his computer. He hurled it out his window in the middle of the night on Saturday, waking up his next door neighbors.

The neighbors called the police to report the man for disturbing the peace. Upon arrival, they heard what happened and did not serve him with any charges.

A spokesperson for the German police summed it up by saying, "Who hasn't felt like doing that?"

The angered PC user did have to clean up about a half block's worth of shattered computer parts, but no police report was filed.

nxbyveromdwjpg

Thank you

jodome

Reckon we need to have this info pretty much at the start of every page. Invaluable and pretty easy workaround to the problems going on with eircom's DNS servers:

Primary DNS: 208.67.222.222
Sec. DNS: 208.67.220.220

You will have to edit your Netopia Router settings.

http://192.168.1.254/

Go into Expert mode/Configure/Connection:

Primary and Sec DNS settings are there, change to above, and hit Save/Restart button.


The above settings are on the Netopia 2247 wireless router, new GUI.

post originally by Irishpancake

If you prefer to reset on your PC rather than the router, here are the details from eircom's site slightly altered to use the OpenDNS addresses:

•Right-click on the connection you are using, which will either be a Local Area Connection if you have connected the modem using the yellow Ethernet cable or a Wireless Network Connection if you are connected wirelessly.
•If you see an Enable option, click it.
•Select Properties.
•Click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/Ipv4).
•Click Properties
•Select Use the following DNS server addresses.
•The Preferred DNS server is 208.67.222.222 (eircom's is 213.94.190.194)
•The Alternate DNS server is 208.67.220.220 (eircom's is 213.94.190.236)
•Click OK.

kerash

I did the opendns thingy and it worked (and I'm crap at techy stuff) so thanks

karlr42

Croga wrote: »

THanks a million guys...

im curious to know how it works - the DNS severs/ open DNS ? Like wouldnt they lose money doing this or are they storing what we browse and then selling it on or something. Couldnt we stop paying eircom for broadband and start using these DNS servers to connect to internet?

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!

kleefarr

Just changed to opendns. Been having to reset my modem 2/3 times a day recently after it drops or stops. On BT, shouldn't make a difference should it?
Will know tomorrow if anything has changed.

Mr.Nice Guy

Been having awful problems myself since Sunday evening. Could only access certain pages but not others. I thought it was just myself and ended up running virus scans and deleting temporary files, cookies, you name it. I felt a bit like Randy from South Park when he lost his internet.

Still having problems tonight but haven't yet tried the suggestions on this thread so hopefully they will help.

Cróga

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!

wow thanks for that, that really cleared it up .

EmoMatt15

Oh thank god i was jammily able to access about 10% of the pages on the internet through Firefox and I knew, I just knew this website would have the answer!!!

I was so FRUSTRATED!!!!
But now its allllll good

lostexpectation

so what have eircom to say about this?

EmoMatt15

hobie wrote: »

Just called tech support at 1890 260 260 ......

Auto question ..... are you calling us on your BB fixed line .....

I reply yes .......

OK ..... we are aware of a BB problem in your area and are working to fix it ......

anything else we do for you ......

errrr ..... no

night night ......

To be fair to Eircom I can't rem any problems with BB for years so maybe it will be fixed overnight ....

ps. this dialup is a bit slow ......

So thats Eircom's Line on it...I think alot of people were having trouble for a while, since yesterday my browsers were iffy on which pages they wanted to open

kingbob387

Stupid Eircom, why did we pay alot for these crappy services

lostexpectation

this has been a problem for nearly a week now, eircom should put out a statement.

ttm

I'm on ISDN dialup just finaly got around to switching to open DNS, which has helped with that issue and now I'm stuggling to work out whats up with Eircoms mail servers. I managed to telnet to them a couple of times but most of the evening they aren't responding and Outlook just times out trying to connect.

EmoMatt15

Yeah they obviously know theres problems

I mean it started off a page here and image there not loading, but the sh1t really hit the fan tonight

piskins72

lostexpectation wrote: »

this has been a problem for nearly a week now, eircom should put out statement.

its been going on longer than that!! there was a thread on this very same forum going back to May about same thing.

irishpancake

lostexpectation wrote: »

this has been a problem for nearly a week now, eircom should put out statement.

This is true.

It appears that eircoms DNS servers have been attacked by hackers, who have poisoned the IP entries and generally have caused havoc.

see my post from last night with this link to a Softpedia article which explains what apparently has happened.

No excuse for eircom, they could and should have taken precautions to prevent this.

kerry4sam

Okay I have thanked a few individual posters in the forums here but this is for everyone who has posted with helpful tips and solutions over the past two nights, seriously, thanks guys & thanks to boards also for this sanity forum here :pac: back up and running again

hatrickpatrick

Just to add my own two cents (eh... cent?) to this discussion:
I've been having serious problems with broadband for maybe 2 months or longer - I'm on a MacBook and up until some time in April or May my Airport icon always had full coverage, represented by 4 bars.

Since then it's become very, very intermittent. sometimes it still gives me good signal strength, other times it goes down to three (but the internet gets so slow you'd swear it wasn't working at all) and sometimes it actually cuts off completely. When I run diagnostics on the computer, it tells me that Airport, Airport settings, Network settings, and ISP are OK, but that both Internet and Server "failed", whatever that means.

Finally figured out how to run a scan on the actual netopia router last night and like in one of the posts here, everything works except the last field, "IP: Fail". Like I said, I've been having various internet problems since May but over the last 3 days it's literally become completely unusable. I thought maybe a bill had been missed or something but I was assured that this was not the case by my parents - and annoyingly, since it's only down at certain times they haven't noticed it as much as me (I'm a typical night owl student and it seems to get much, much worse at night).

Has anyone talked to Eircom about this? I'm going to ring them first thing in the morning and find out what's going on, but what I really want to know is, am I the only one who's been having problems since may, or has anyone else had that? Because my phone lines were merged (used to have two numbers when my mum ran a business from home but now that she doesn't run it from here they merged the main house phone with the broadband line, and this was a few weeks before the chaos started). I assumed maybe they'd damaged something, but if there are others who've had problems for that long I may just have to glumly accept that this is something which a phone call to tech support (if they actually pick up the phone, which is around 85% unlikely at best) will fix...

ShiverinEskimo

Just to add to the multitudes I switched to openDNS too and all problems are sorted for me - including xbox live.

Calibos

I was well used to DNS outages from my days with UTV. Copped it was a DNS issue as it was intermittent, ie. a refresh sometimes got a page to load. So I log into my Netopia, and then open the text file I saved on my desktop years ago with the OpenDNS addresses. Copy and Paste them into the Router settings and.................

Nothing!!!!!

Thought it must have been something else after all!

Going on this thread. Turns out it wasn't!

Must have pasted in an extra space or something!

argghhhh!!

hobie

Now all up and working fine this morning so fingers crossed .....

tagoona

I got onto Eircom last night as I was getting the errors other people have here.
It happened that those who would be savvy enough to find this boards and get me the DNS settings were all out for the night.

I got onto Eircom support (hoping they could supply me with new DNS(open DNS) settings).
What a bloody joke. I should have known better.

I had the indian on the phone tell me the network was down and that it was not a DNS problem. I mean - wtf?
To prove it, he gave me the IP address of google, to show me that it wasn't DNS, proving my point.!

Lesson learned. Write down new DNS settings from work before heading home!!!

pauld

Thanks to the very clever people on forum. While I am on BT, I was able to help two family memebers (eircom) yesterday evening courtesy of the information I found on here.

A quick question, now that the issue is resolved should I be telling the family to revert their DNS settings back to EIRCOMs? If so, what are the EIRCOM DNS addresses?

thanks

Paul

Pablod

I am able to access websites using their direct IP address no problem,
But, I'm having a problem using the Open DNS Server address's

When I enter the new address's and 'save and restart' its always looking for the eircom broadband password - which I have
But it does not accept - any ideas?
Or is it a different uer name & password for the Open DNS servers?

Cheers

cpu-dude

Pablod wrote: »

I am able to access websites using their direct IP address no problem,
But, I'm having a problem using the Open DNS Server address's

When I enter the new address's and 'save and restart' its always looking for the eircom broadband password - which I have
But it does not accept - any ideas?
Or is it a different uer name & password for the Open DNS servers?

Cheers

Nope no different, the Eircom username is eircom@eircom.net and the password is broadband1.

templar01

thanks for all the help posted in the link guys- cheers.

Seem to be having the same issue as Pablod tho

"When I enter the new address's and 'save and restart' its always looking for the eircom broadband password - which I have
But it does not accept - any ideas?
Or is it a different uer name & password for the Open DNS servers?"

didnt get to spend much time trying to fix it last night and started fiddling around with the router - so god knows i probably goosed it !

so will attempt again tonight - hopefuly with better results

Pablod

cpu-dude wrote: »

Nope no different, the Eircom username is eircom@eircom.net and the password is broadband1.

Thats exactly the same username and password I use.
I have even reset the router to factory settings and it still does not accept when trying to connect to Open DNS

cpu-dude

Pablod wrote: »

Thats exactly the same username and password I use.
I have even reset the router to factory settings and it still does not accept when trying to connect to Open DNS

Remove the DNS settings and change them manually in the TCP/IP settings.

Pablod

cpu-dude wrote: »

Remove the DNS settings and change them manually in the TCP/IP settings.

Cheers Dude, will give that a go later