weird problem viewing a website, possibly DNS issue?

[Mike521]

Hello, if anyone could help me out with this I'd really appreciate it..


Recently a message board website that I visit changed servers (and has a new IP address), and kept the same domain name. Since they did that, I have not been able to access their boards.

However, if I connect to my AOL account (through TCP/IP) and then tell explorer to visit the site, it is able to open it and view the site perfectly.

I am guessing that the reason for this is because my broadband ISP (cable) has not yet upgraded their DNS server's tables (manually or automatically) to show that "www.whatever.com" now resides on a new IP address, and instead their cached records are still pointing the the old IP address. Yet, when I connect to AOL, AOL tells internet explorer (which is the built in browser for AOL) to use its OWN DNS server, which has updated its records and has the current IP address of the site I want.

I tested this by connecting to AOL and pinging the site to obtain its current IP address. Then I disconnected from AOL and opened up internet explorer. First I typed in "www.whatever.com" and of course the page now would not load. Then I entered the site's IP address, and it DID load.
Unfortunately though, this IP address seems to be the host of more than one website, which must be located in folders on the server. But I can't get a directory listing to access the site I want, because they have a generic index.html page up, which just says that the Apache server is up and working.


OK so that is the problem. This has been going on for 2 days now, and I'm getting tired of waiting for my ISP to udate their DNS tables.

I would like to point my computer to AOL's DNS server, for the time being.
However, I have a linksys router, and it does not seem to want to let me manually configure my DNS server, through the web configuration utility.
Another problem would be that I don't actually know AOL's DNS server. I suppose I could find that out by dialing up to AOL from another machine, and checking out winipcfg to get the DNS server.


Oh one last detail, I am on windows XP.


Thanks in advance to anyone that actually reads through this whole thing, and knows of a working solution!

and if I'm wrong about the cause, please tell me!

 

[Geffy]

In theory the DNS servers should all get updated at the same time.

For the non AOL browsin you are using IE6? and the AOL browsing Netscape of some sort, yes.

If the IE6 isnt picking it up you could do a Forced Refresh, you do this by clickin Ctrl+F5. This has helped me on some occasions

 

[Mike521]

hmm forced refresh didn't help


when I'm not using AOL, I load up Internet Explorer seperately.

when I'm in AOL, I use AOL's built in browser (AOL 7.0, internet explorer), as well as regular internet explorer. no netscape anywhere..

I am guessing that AOL overrides IE's DNS server and tells it to use its own..

I just can't figure what else this could be besides a DNS problem..

do you know if there's a way I can force my router to use another DNS server? that would at least rule out that possibility

 

[gajef]

You can try DIG : It allows you to run a query for a givven name at specific dns-servers

So first find out your dns-server by going to dos (or cmd) and type ipconfig /all

Now copy the dns entry into DIG's Root server box
Enter the www.whatever.com into the Target box
and press tcp-lookup
You can also enter other nameserver addresses into the Root server box...

Gert-Jan