Quote:
Originally Posted by ryanfx
if the "DNS servers" went down (which there are 13 main ones btw..) they are each redundant and they would just point to each other in case of error. Whoever told you that was bull****ting you.
|
This was the response I got from a very trusted source the last time Comcast had a similar situation. I did not verify this one, but the user problems seemed similar.
> Comcast has two large DNS server clusters, on in Philadelphia and one in
> Denver. All Comcast subscribers use them. Half use PA as their primary and
> half use CO as their primary. The first half uses CO as their secondary and
> the second half uses PA as their secondary. Each site was supposed to be
> sized to be able to handle the entire contry by itself. Well, CO failed, and
> PA was not able to handle the resulting load.
>
> DNS stands for Domain Name Resolution. When you type a URL into your browser
> your PC sends a DNS lookup command on port 53 to the primary DNS server
> specified in your PC/s IP stack. If things are working the server runs the
> URL against its database and returns the IP of the hosting server to your PC
> and then you are able to connect to the site. If the primary lookup fails
> then your PC sends the same request to the secondary server specified in your
> PC's stack. If that request fails your page load fails and you can't surf
> even though you have a working connection to the net. That was the case with
> us on Thursday. If you knew the host IP for the site you wanted to get to you
> could have put that in the URL bar of your browser and gotten to the site OK.
>
> A total server DNS failure looks like a dead internet connection. If you are
> curious you can see your DNS entrys by typing "ipconfig -all" at a c prompt.
> (assumes windows os)