NetGenie says my Netgear N600 WIRELESS DUAL BAND ROUTER is up and running and connected to the internet. The downloading clock speed seems low but it’s always kind of blown (I live in the sticks, but still was able to get the 2 mbps fiber optic package). It’s currently clocking in at 1500 Kilobits.
But lately it has sucked no matter what, I updated everything last night and it didn’t solve my ‘DNS Server Error’ issue.
Call the internet company or is the problem on my end?
90% chance of it being your ISP, 10% chance of it being your router.
It really depends on whether your DNS lookups go PC -> ISP, or whether your DNS lookups go PC -> router -> ISP. If the latter, it’s possible your router is malfunctioning in some way and not correctly doing DNS lookups.
Google has two public DNS servers you can use if your ISP’s DNS is broken. Try replacing your DNS addresses with these two: 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 and see if that resolves the problem.
Do you use Google Chrome by any chance? I only ever get that message from Chrome, for some reason.
Yeah.
I’ll pay more attention when I get home and it happens again.
When I had a DNS Server Error, I just called my ISP and they fixed it within 2 - 3 minutes.
FIrst of all, if you do call your ISP, they’ll invariably walk you through some steps to make sure it’s not your router, or your pc’s configuration.
Secondly, check the network settings on your PC, and the settings your router received from your ISP (you’ll have to go into the router’s configuration page for this part). Change the network settings on your PC to use the dns server the router’s getting from your ISP. If that fixes the problem, you’ve got a buggy router. If not, your ISP’s likely to blame.
I’m not sure, This happens to me about once or twice a day. I also live in the absolute sticks. I have no technical knowledge that can help you, but in the short term, FWIW I find that if I turn wi-fi off on my laptop and then turn it back on again, it works. This has been happening with the last 2 routers and 3 computers that I’ve had so I don’t really know what it’s all about. It’s such a quick fix that it’s never bothered me enough to call the internet company (TWC) about it.
Another thing worth doing is finding a reliable DNS server that’s not your ISP’s default one for you. Then, next time you see a DNS error, reconfigure your PC to use this alternate DNS server instead of the default one that it learned from the router (which learned it from the ISP’s router).
For example, try Google’s:
Of course, Google probably keeps stats and uses that info. If you want more privacy, find one that’s not publicly promoted (and cross your fingers).
That used to work. So did using random hosts to relay mail for you.
However, due to the increasing levels of traffic and abuse of the services, many DNS servers will limit their responses to random outsiders. For example, the 4 DNS servers I run will answer any queries (called “recursion enabled”) from any of our customers, but if a random outsider tries to use our servers, the servers will only answer questions about our customer’s DNS, but not answer (called “recursion disabled”) questions about random other domains.
For example, if you’re not one of our customers and ask one of our nameservers for the address for www*.ourcustomer.com, you’ll get the answer. If you ask the same server for the address for www.*google.com, you’ll get a response that this query requires recursion but recursion is not available.
Note that this is the polite way of denying random external requests. I know of some sites that answer external queries with nonsensical data.
Also, it is a good idea to configure more than one nameserver if your software allows that. That way, if there’s a problem along the path from you to the first nameserver, your software will try the second one.
You might find Google’s namebench useful - it lets you compare any nameserver you want against a large list of public servers, and will tell you how fast each is, as well as things like whether the server provides bogus responses to queries for non-existent names (NXDOMAIN hijacking) or, worse yet, provides bogus answers to queries for actual working names.
Update:
I get** Error 103** and Error 324 the ‘F5’ trick works to fix the Error 324 problem, sometimes. Mostly though I give up in frustration on the days it’s running poorly or not at all.
I called the ISP and they tell me there are no flags for my connection on their end. I really think my router is fine. Is there a way to get undeniable proof for this guy that the problem is on his end? Can I just plug my computer into the LAN phone jack itself and bypass the router completely?
If by “LAN phone jack” you mean “modem”, then that’s exactly what I would do. Run speedtests while on your wireless router (hardwired and wireless), then compare those with speedtests while hardwired directly to the modem.