In system or network administration, there is an adage: “When it rains, it pours.” This refers to multiple failures that can happen at one time. This morning was such a time.
First problem: I haven’t sprung additional cash for a static IP address so I’m still going ghetto with dynamic IP. Problem with dynamic IP is an ISP can arbitrarily reset it at any time. In my experience, with a decent ISP, such as Road Runner by Time Warner Cable, this happens maybe once or twice a year. For some reason, with AT&T DSL, it happens almost every week! I’m not sure if it’s just an unstable DSL modem connection, or they’re doing this on purpose to frustrate me. I’m thinking the latter. This morning around 10:30am Pacific, the dynamic IP lease expired and my DSL was assigned a new IP address. I got paged that my site was inaccessible, so now I had to find out what my new IP was and tried to enter it into my DNS server.
Now for the second problem. My DNS is hosted by Network Solutions. They have a nice warm & fuzzy GUI that I can use to modify my DNS info at any time, anywhere. Sounds cool. It worked great in the past. But for some reason this morning the site was dog slow! It would take me 5 minutes to load each page. As a customer, I was able to call their tech support and attempted to find out what went wrong. After a few minutes on hold, a friendly (American) voice answered and informed me that they were performing, and I quote, “maintenance on the site to improve the customer experience.” I got an estimate of 30 minutes for the down time. They weren’t improving my customer experience, especially in light of Network Solutions domain name phishing and hijacking incidents.
I did manage to input the new IP address afterwards. My site was inaccessible for an hour. Maybe more because DNS changes may take upto 24 hours to propagate everywhere in the world. This is what I have deal with when trying self-host a WordPress install with a crappy ISP and DNS providers. Too many moving parts that can go wrong, and they often go wrong at the same time. I’m still crossing my fingers!
On a side note, in relation to the Hal 9000 image above, enjoy this LOLcats image related to 2001: Space Odyssey. It brightens my otherwise frustrating day.
Tags: applications, internet
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The company I go with, cirtexhosting.com isn’t as stable as some of the expensive ones, but I’ve found their servers are faster than the more expensive ones even though they’re relatively cheap.
I’ll check that out. A stable and plentiful internet bandwidth are my next requirement for a hosted server ISP. Not going to be easy, there’s a lot of horror stories out there.
Tough day huh? Try mine, We had a blackout from 10 am to 1 pm, This is a daily occurence in South Africa now, so we live with it and work around it, Then my DSL went down from about 3 pm to just after 6 pm, Now the frigging SQL server is giving crap. 14 hours I have been trying to get some productivity and absolutely squat. A DNS error, my kingdom for a DNS error
You’re right, you have it tougher. Sorry to hear that! I hope you get to sort out that SQL error.
Sounds like a headache… but also sounds like you know what you’re doing!
I didn’t know the thng about static / dynamic IP. I think I have a dynamic but never seen a difference… I guess my Internet provider is alright then!
Your internet provider is Roger’s Cable, so it’s most likely a dynamic IP address, just like mine. My experience with cable modem when I was in San Diego was great. You’ve made the right choice with cable.
Rudy you can visit that site at 100sa.co.za again. It’s working now, but is still being constructed so there is nothing of real value yet.
Currently using AT&T I understand the frustration, our seems “reset” several times a day, though has not changed the IP (as of yet). No worries though, tomorrow we are changing to cable, with the hope finding a more stable connection. Ah, the joys of cyberworld.
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@Guy:
Interesting site. I always wanted to visit South Africa and play golf there.
@Kelly:
Let me know how cable works for you.
Let me understand this, You want to fly halfway across the world, to hit a ball with a stick?
Thre’s much more to do here. If you are serious about coming to this part of the world, give me a shout and I shall facilitate your accommodation and the games.
That’s right. You have Gary Player to thank for that. I’ll be sure to find you if I get to go there.
(*follow up of last comment 😉 *)
Yeah, Cable is awesome. The service is pretty reliable too and I don’t think it’s just the company… also the technology. I can still remember using the internet with a modem… not that long ago actually. Glad times have changed even though it means some more headaches!
To answer the comment you left at my place… 😉 我是法国人，现在在加拿大生活。我在中学开始学习汉语，学了十年多了。但是不是中国人！ ；-） Excuse any grammatical mistake… my Chinese isn’t as good as it used to be!
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I also started in middle school 27 years ago. I’m more Canadian (English) than Chinese. So the best I could do was translate what you just said thru Altavista’s Babel Fish universal translator. 😉
I kinda had this idea as I typed… 😆
I was basically saying I’m not Chinese-Canadian but just French from France, although I’ve been living in Canada for a few years now and will stay there. I learned Chinese in school and then specialized in Chinese modern and contemporary history at uni.
😉
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For a split second when I read this title I thought it was aimed at me, then I saw the graphic and I saw the light.
db
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LOL!