I think I know why some of us get DNS lookup failures. Somebody fucked up and there's a bad entry in the main DNS tables as known by the root name servers.
$ whois prosoundweb.comWhois Server Version 1.3Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registeredwith many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.netfor detailed information. Domain Name: PROSOUNDWEB.COM Registrar: REGISTER.COM, INC. Whois Server: whois.register.com Referral URL: http://www.register.com Name Server: NS1.BROADJAM.NET Name Server: NS2.BROADJAM.NET Status: ACTIVE Updated Date: 15-feb-2005 Creation Date: 20-aug-2000 Expiration Date: 20-aug-2005 < ... snip stuff ...> Domain servers in listed order: NS1.BROADJAM.NET 64.73.41.34 NS2.BROADJAM.NET 64.73.41.35
Note the names of the name servers above. Guess what?
They don't resolve:
$ nslookupDefault Server: dns1.myisp.comAddress: 64.xxx.xxx.2> ns1.broadjam.netServer: dns1.myisp.comAddress 64.xxx.xxx.2*** dns1.myisp.com can't find ns1.broadjam.net: Non-existent domain>
So, let's look up the names using the given DNS servers' IP addresses:
> server 64.73.41.34Default Server: bhost1.broadjam.netAddress: 64.73.41.34>
Very interesting ... the reverse lookup on what's supposed to be ns1.broadjam.net returns something else!
> ns1.broadjam.netDefault Server: bhost1.broadjam.netAddress: 64.73.41.34DNS request timed out. timeout was 2 seconds.*** bhost1.broadjam.net can't find ns1.broadjam.net: Non-existent domain>
Yep. The name server entries recorded in the root name servers (returned by whois, above; these are the values you tell Internic when you create or renew your domain registration) are not correct. Either this means that at some point, broadjam renamed their name servers (dunno why they'd do that) and didn't tell Huge Universe, or when Huge Universe moved the servers recently (the move seemed to coincide with these lookup failures), they just guessed at name-server names and got it wrong.
I think the reason that I can get to PSW from some machines and not from others is that some name servers may have very long times-to-live and have cached srforums.prosoundweb.com's IP address. In this case, the lookups never get past the nearby name server's cache.
To actually post this, I changed my computer's primary DNS server address to 64.73.41.34 and it works. Changing back to my ISP's usual name servers, I lose.
So, Ernie -- that's your problem. Can you fix it? Look for my invoice in your snail-mail.
thanks,
-a