No morning browsing

[keithiopia]

Hello all!

I'm new here but I'm very glad this forum exists.
Pretty happy with my connection so far, seems quite speedy.
One problem I seem to be having which I didn't experience with my previous ISP (Eclipse) is that web pages aren't available to view every morning. A reboot of my router seems to fix it until the next time.
I can't be sure, but I think other net applications don't suffer from the same issue. Torrents, Tweetdeck etc still seem to have connectivity.

Any ideas what could be causing it?

Thanks!
Keith

[keithiopia]

Shouldn't have said that - jinxed it.
Had my entire connection disappear and seemed to take a while to reconnect. Now syncing at 18956 instead of 197xx

[Tony1044]

There does seem to be a bit of a pattern for some users' with the supplied router dropping connections.

I'm not sure if there's maybe a bad batch, or if there might be a more inherent problem somewhere along the line (both seem unlikely given the number that O2 must've shipped).

My own experiences would seem to suggest that the Thomson routers are a little more sensitive to heat than other brands, so if you've got in a confined space it might help to try moving it if possible.

Failing that, give O2 a call and they will most likely send a replacement out to try.

Oh, and welcome to the forums

[keithiopia]

Thanks for your reply Tony.
I probably should have made clear in my post, I'm not using the supplied router, I stuck with my (IMO superior) Netgear router.

The connection doesn't seem to drop out completely, it's still synced according to the router, it's just I can't see any web pages. Something to do with DNS perhaps?

[Tony1044]

Hmmm...possibly, if it's usually browsing related.

Next time it happens, bring up a command prompt (CMD.EXE) and type NSLOOKUP http://www.google.com

If you get an answer like the following, it's not DNS.

nslookup http://www.google.com

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: http://www.l.google.com
Addresses: 74.125.43.106
74.125.43.103
74.125.43.99
74.125.43.147
74.125.43.104
74.125.43.105
Aliases: http://www.google.com

If it comes back with timeouts:

DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.

then it's probably worth trying to use OpenDNS's DNS servers.

Otherwise, we're looking at more in depth stuff so if you want to give those things a try and if it still doesn't work, if you hit me with a private, there's some other stuff you can try that I can send to you.

Also, it might be worthwhile running with the O2 supplied router for a few days, just to rule out hardware issues.

[keithiopia]

Hi Tony,
Thanks again!

I just tried running it now, for curiosity's sake as web pages are appearing fine at the moment. Not sure I'm using it correctly though.

C:\>nslookup http://www.google.com
*** Can't find server name for address 192.168.0.1: Non-existent domain
*** Default servers are not available
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.0.1

*** UnKnown can't find http://www.google.com Non-existent domain

[Tony1044]

That's a bit odd - you can resolve web pages ok right now, but your NSLOOKUP comes back with a non-existent domain...

Ah...penny has just dropped.

The formatting on the forum is most likely to blame.

Don't put http:// in front.

NSLOOKUP WWW . GOOGLE. COM (without the spaces and it doesn't matter if it's capital letters or not)

That's what you get for not actually checking your post...sorry!

[keithiopia]

Ahh, that's better. I thought I'd tried every combination of address but missed this quite obvious one.

C:\>nslookup www.google.com
*** Can't find server name for address 192.168.0.1: Non-existent domain
*** Default servers are not available
Server:  UnKnown
Address:  192.168.0.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    www.l.google.com
Addresses:  209.85.229.106, 209.85.229.147, 209.85.229.99, 209.85.229.103
          209.85.229.104, 209.85.229.105
Aliases:  www.google.com

How just have to wait till it happens again!

[Tony1044]

Originally Posted by keithiopia

Ahh, that's better. I thought I'd tried every combination of address but missed this quite obvious one.

[CODE]C:\>nslookup www.google.com
*** Can't find server name for address 192.168.0.1: Non-existent domain
*** Default servers are not available
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.0.1

That bit can safely be ignored. It's because there's no reverse DNS lookup available (IP address to name) on home routers.

If it's easier you can use this little script I've just knocked up:

'Timed NSLOOKUP for fire and forget will dump the results to a file called c:\ns.txt
'Written by Tony Johncock for www.O2user.co.uk
'The next line just sets up a system variable
Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

'The value of i determines how many times the script loops (in this case, 16 equates to 16 hours)
Do until i=16
'The next line actually just runs nslookup - the ,0 stops a CMD window appearing
oShell.Run "%ComSpec% /c nslookup.exe www.google.com >> c:\ns.txt",0
'The sleep command works in ms so 1000 = 1 second; so below it's once an hour.
wscript.sleep(60000)
i=i+1
'The loop takes us back up to the do until line with i incremented by one
Loop
'Notes - if you want it to run more frequently (say every 30 minutes) then you might want to change
'the value of i accordingly - i.e. until i=32 with a 1/2 hour cycle still runs for 16 hours;
'i=64 with a 15 minute cycle does the same

Copy and paste it into notepad and then save it as, say ns.vbs
From a command prompt, just run ns.vbs and [as it stands] it'll automatically do a nslookup every hour for 16 hours and write the results to c:\ns.txt

If you want to try it quickly to get a feel, change the 60000 to 1000 and it'll take 16 seconds instead.

[keithiopia]

Bloody hell Tony! You can write Visual Basic too? Is there no end to your talents?