weird internet problem

[hugoagogo]

i can get some sites but not others today
this site, obviously, ebay, google and a few other 'simple' ones but i can't get bbc news or my webmailer or hotmail or the bank

what's that all about?

[Plotloss]

Could be a DNS issue at your ISP's end.

[hugoagogo]

ah right, of course


what does that mean then?

[Jinx]

hugoagogo said:

ah right, of course what does that mean then?

www.dns.net/dnsrd/

[r32]

Are you with NTL?

If so it could be the webcaches that they force you to use. They are well known for causing some sites not to show up. Hotmail is one that i can never seem to reach.

Check www.cableforum.co.uk for more details, and resolutions.

[aranell]

hugoagogo said:

ah right, of course what does that mean then?

Very loosely....
Websites are really a string of numbers (IP address). We find it hard to remember these numbers, so we remember the names instead. DNS translates between the name that we type in and the actual IP address and vice versa. So, if your ISP's DNS servers aren't working correctly or have bits of their databases down, they won't be able to perform the translation between where you are trying to go and the actual IP address of the site. I hope that sort of made sense!

I've also seen this error occur when you have spyware on your machine - well worth downloading Lavasoft's Adaware, updating it and running a scan, just to make sure

[hugoagogo]

aranell said:

hugoagogo said: ah right, of course what does that mean then? Very loosely.... I hope that sort of made sense!

ah right, again

its stopped doing it now