Telecom DNS Updates

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Telecom DNS Updates

niedermayer

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#58976 24-Mar-2010 12:43

Hi everyone,

I am a subsciber with Gamecenter Live, an American based service where I pay about $28 a month to watch Live Ice Hockey games online. I have not been able to access this service for the past 3 days. After a lot of back and forth between me and Gamecenter, they have come to the conclusion that the problem is with my ISP. This is their latest reply:

"It is not something that we can directly control. We push out DNS updates for
our sites by way of our Content Delivery Network (CDN), Limelight. If
your ISP does not update their DNS records in a timely manner, we
cannot be held responsible. We have already notified our internal
network support as well as Limelight, it is now up to your ISP to
update their records."

Does this sound possible? If so, how often do Telecom update their DNS records?

Thanks!

freitasm

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#310701 24-Mar-2010 12:51

You left some information behind... What plan are you on? If you are on Big Time, are you sure it's not the same problem affecting others with International traffic in the last few days?

Have you tried using a third party DNS to see if there's any difference at all (Google DNS, OpenDNS)?

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muppet

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#310702 24-Mar-2010 12:54

This is a common misconception.

Telecom/Any ISP do not have to "update their DNS".

What really happens is this:

You setup cheese.com and as part of setting up cheese.com, you define (in your nameserver records) how long other people are allowed to cache the answers you give out.

When someone in New Zealand looks up cheese.com through Telecom, Telecom's nameservers goes out and finds that cheese.com = 1.2.3.4 and then caches that information for as long as cheese.com said it should be cached.

This is where problems arise. If you've just looked up cheese.com and they had their cache time set to 1 month, Telecom don't have to go out and get the "official" answer for a month, as the cache time was set that long. Telecom can only force the cache to flush by restartnig their DNS server, something they're not going to do.

Now, most people are smart and set their DNS TTL (time-to-live, the amount of time caching is allowed) quite low these days. So it's very unlikely that this is actually the problem.

What's the domain name in question? What happens if you query another DNS server (ie temporarily use opendns) for the domain?

I've heard of Telecom DNS servers not allowing really low TTL's on DNS records and tweaking them higher (thus breaking the DNS spec) but that was quite a while ago and I doubt that do it anymore (any Telecom techs care to comment?)

I hope that made sense anyway. Tell us a bit more about the domain/sub domains and test using another DNS server.

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niedermayer

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#310708 24-Mar-2010 13:05

Thanks for the information guys. Yes I am on Big Time.

I am not very savvy when it comes to these things, so I didn't know you could use 3rd Party DNS. I just tried accessing the site (gamecenter.nhl.com) using Google DNS , and it worked! So I assume it is the same issue that other people are suffering at the moment with the Big Time Plan.

Thanks heaps for your help guys. Hopefully they have this issue fixed soon.

freitasm

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#310711 24-Mar-2010 13:08

Nope. If you changed DNS and it worked it's not the same problem others are having then. Because the DNS just tells your PC what's the IP address - it's not actually accessing anything.

Somehow the Telecom DNS is not seeing this address update. You can run a command prompt and while using the Google DNS do a PING to the server - see what IP address it resolves to. Then try the PING again but using the Telecom DNS, after rebooting your PC and see if it's a different IP address.

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Ragnor

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#310772 24-Mar-2010 14:55

What what the exact domain that wasn't being resolved correctly.

Checking gamecenter.nhl.com on google dns and telecom's it looks the same

Eg:

nslookup

> server alien.xtra.co.nz
Default Server: alien.xtra.co.nz
Address: 202.27.184.3

> gamecenter.nhl.com
Server: alien.xtra.co.nz
Address: 202.27.184.3

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: gamecenter.nhl.com
Address: 208.92.36.99

> server 8.8.8.8
Default Server: google-public-dns-a.google.com
Address: 8.8.8.8

> gamecenter.nhl.com
Server: google-public-dns-a.google.com
Address: 8.8.8.8

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: gamecenter.nhl.com
Address: 208.92.36.99

ptinson

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#310987 24-Mar-2010 21:26

Telecoms ISP DNS servers respect TTL and have for at least the past 5 years, if not longer so that should not be a concern.

NB. Alien and Terminator are no longer the server of choice, if you would like to test against our DNS servers then please use dnsc1 & dnsc2.xtra.co.nz.I know Alien and Terminator are ingrained and simple to remember though...

I have checked all of our servers for the assumed domain above and they all return the same address as google, OpenDNS and some other servers in the US.
There is only one record for that name and it has a TTL of 300 seconds, so again should not be an issue of that nature.

However, we are assuming a host name, and that name is the common entry point and not likely to be the same as the CDN the content provider refers to.
The demo on that page uses nuelion.com as the CDN, not LimeLight so it doesnt help much either.

If you could provide the URL of something that fails to load when you are using the Telecom DNS servers i will take another look and see if something appears out of sorts.
If you DM me the following details when it occurs i can check it for you:

* The URL that failed
* The DNS servers you are using, the IP or name, if you have the modem set to automatic please check what you have been given
* A description of what the error looks like, does it just not play? do you get an error on screen that sort of thing

Happy to help if i can.

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Ragnor

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#311090 25-Mar-2010 01:08

Yeah I couldn't remember dnsc1 so just used alien, why did they decide to use dnsc1 / dnsc2 instead of ns1 / ns2 or dns1 / dns2 like everyone else!

ptinson

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#311128 25-Mar-2010 08:31

This post is OT so I will make it brief.
dnsc1 and 2 were decided on based on there going to be a requirement for separate authoritative addresses, and these would have taken the form of dnsh1 & 2. So C = Caching and H = Hosting.

That never quite happened.

However we now do have name servers called ns1 & 2, they are caching only and closed to the public at large, they are only available to customers as we migrate them, or new customers that sign up.
They aren't that busy yet only 2.2k queries per second.

If there are further questions about our name servers you can DM me, if i get enough i may start a thread unless someone beats me to it.

Of course I can't share some things... Hmm that was mean to be short.

Right back OT

meat popsicle