The DNS problem Monday 7/9/2012

Wanted to post a bit of a clear up for all the poor description and hype that most of the media is saying in regards to Mondays shutting down of the FBI usages of infected servers that will be causing some issues to people.

First of all it will not as some news outlets have been saying “Preventing you from accessing the internet” it will also not prevent you connecting to your ISP. It will work irregardless of Monday, unless of course your ISP is having issues, they do from time to time, its normal. All that is happening is your DNS requests, those are the requests that transfer the name of a site to its IP or address number will not work. What you may get is a site not found or location not found error, depending on your web browser, (Firefox, IE, Safari, etc.). For example if you go to www.google.com your DNS will change the info to 67.345.22.34 for example so it can be routed to Google. To fix this it is quite easy, go into your DNS settings and make sure they are defined for you ISP or you can use some public third party, and in some cases more stable DNS servers like OpenDNS, GoogleDNS, etc. I will at the end of this posting list a few of them you can use.

For Linux,
Generally edit your resolv.conf and put the proper entry’s in them, some Linux’s have programs that you run, so that others you can just edit the file directly.

For OSX,
Select the Systems Preferences application, then select the Network icon (looks like a little circle with lines in it), you should see entries like AirPort, Ethernet, FireWire. Select the connection you are using then select the connect properties. A new window should open with DNS button along the bar. Using the + or – keys enter or remove the DNS entry’s, you must have the “.” between each set of numbers then select OK to save.

For Windows,
This may be a bit different depending on your version of windows, go to the Control Panel, then select Network Connections and select local network. Click the Properties, then select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Click on Properties, in the lower section of the dialog box you will see Preferred DNS and Alternate DNS box’s. Enter the numbers in the box. you may have to click on the “Use the following DNS server address:” button. the click “OK” and your done.

Here is a bit of advanced setting.- cool to know but not super important to change.

You can use a file called a “hosts” to enter names and IP addresses out side of the DNS service. the file is called hosts, you will need to look at your systems to find it. Some are in /etc others are in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\. Its a simple text file, you enter the IP address and the name and it will be read first before checking with the DNS servers. If you don’t understand this then don’t worry you don’t need to change anything.

Some of the public DNS site ID’s you can use

for OpenDNS its – 208.67.220.220 and 208.67.222.222
for googleDNS its – 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

That’s all for now

Happy surfing