Example Article for Tech Talk
Some MT43 News Subscribers Have Internet Problems
 | Author:
Victor Sample
Vic Sample: MT43 News Treasurer |
Some MT43 News Subscribers Have Internet Problems
Victor Sample
Amazon owns AWS (Amazon Web Services) and many companies around the world depend on AWS for their daily computer operations. MT43News uses AWS for extended data storage from our main server.
A few weeks ago, many of the Amazon AWS users were affected by an outage. The problem was a faulty Domain Name Server (DNS) somewhere in the cloud.
When you enter a website name or click on a link, your browser sends that link out to a Domain Name Server (DNS) to resolve the human name (like mt43news.com) into a true internet address. By default, the first DNS that it goes through is the DNS owned by your Internet Service Provider (such as MT Internet, Spectrum, Globalnet, etc.). From there, it can pass through any number of DNS on its way to the actual destination. If any DNS fails, you receive an error stating that the website could not be found and asking if you spelled it correctly. Somewhere on the error screen is generally a message about a DNS probe failing.
In the past 2 weeks, several MT43News subscribers have reported getting a website not found error while trying to access the MT43News website. Most of them on links to the PDF version of the current issue. Even our layout editor, working from home, could not access the website.
However, I knew the website was up and running fine. I could access it, and the MT43 News staff in the office had no difficulty.
The problem is a DNS server failing to resolve the address. The first person to report the problem was our layout editor. I initially thought it must be the Spectrum DNS, but the office uses Spectrum and they were having no problems.
Since then, four or five MT43 News subscribers reported the same problem, but they were in different locations using different ISPs. So that told me the problem is a bad DNS server out in the cloud – just like the Amazon problem.
Unfortunately, there is nothing that MT43News can do about a bad DNS server. The DNS Server at our website is resolving properly or no one could access the server.
However, there are some things I can suggest you do/try if you experience the problem. There are many paths a request for a website can take. The easiest thing to try is to keep trying until you get a path that doesn’t access the faulty DNS server.
If you are pretty technical and feel comfortable changing your default DNS server, you can change the default server, which will change the path. At home, I changed the default DNS server from my ISP to the Google public DNS servers. If you feel comfortable changing the DNS servers, change them to use addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
If you don’t feel comfortable changing your default DNS, try using different ISPs. Most of us have cell phones and all cell phones I know of come with web browsers. Try using your cell phone to access the website; or if you were experiencing the problem on your cell phone, try using your computer – especially if your ISP is different than your cell phone service provider.
Of course, you can always contact us at MT43 News via email, phone or in person. We will do our very best to walk you through the issue.
Fortunately, DNS problems do tend to get fixed as people report having issues. The problem will eventually get fixed, usually when the failing DNS Server is reloaded.
