- Thread starter weldequip
- Start date
:full
I'll turn off for now, calm down & go & see which muppet wins the Apprentice 
malcolm
& Clementine the Cat
- Messages
- 9,715
- Location
- Bedford UK
Which ISP are you with these days?
I thought you'd moved away from Tiscalli Steve (in the same way as someone might move away from a very cheap Chinese gasless MIG with a minimum 90 amps which has been mis-sold as something that might actually work).
I thought you'd moved away from Tiscalli Steve (in the same way as someone might move away from a very cheap Chinese gasless MIG with a minimum 90 amps which has been mis-sold as something that might actually work).
- Messages
- 17,444
sorry
DNS is like a giant telephone book.
Computers on the net are identified by a unique ip address that looks like this :-
89.145.76.7
Its like a phone number to computers, with 89 being the main area code and so on, each seperated by the dots representing a different telephone switch on the way to it. Just a set of "routing" information in a machine readable form.
Now, you could have to type in http://89.145.76.7 which is a bit awkward to remember (and it could be much worse when ipv6 gets implemented as it will become something like http://2001:1888:0:1:2d0:b7ff:fe7d:bed6 ) so domain names were thought up to make human readable versions of this.
If you think of domain names as peoples names in the phone book, and the ip address as their telephone number its a valid analogy since the normal telephone system uses the phone number to route the call in a similar way.
So, you type in http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/ into your browser, your pc then goes off and asks the big telephone book operator for your area (your DNS server) who mig-welding.co.uk is. It will answer you "oh its 89.145.76.7" so your pc can then go ask your router to go to 89.145.76.7 for the mig-welding.co.uk website.
Theres a little more to it in that no one telephone operator has a book with EVERYONE in the world in it as that would be humongous and permanently changing, so when you ask your operator, it has to go off and ask someone (the root servers) who is responsible for that extension (eg .co.uk) who to ask, then asks them for who it is and so on down the tree. Itll remember the answer for a bit in its memory or cache as it is known, (for the length of time specified in the record ttl or time to live) in case anyone else asks it for the same place to save having to go through all that again. Its why sites like www.bbc.co.uk respond quickly, because theyre already resolved in the cache so the server doesnt have to go off and research the answer first.
Now you understand the concept of dns, you can guess the rather cryptic "dns error" means your pc asked your (isp's ) domain name server and it either couldnt find the answer in its telephone book, or it just plain old didnt answer (possibly network congestion or other problems). Hence dns error.
Ive been over thinking again havent I ? I bet your glad you went to watch the apprentice. However Ive just read zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and my brain is still wired...
gavuk
artful-bodger
- Messages
- 2,951
- Location
- Wilts
hi steve ,we swapped to sky a while ago ,good download speeds no capping on the deal we are on and a basic tv package (discovery etc),no complaints so far ,but the deals/speeds change so often its worth checking before changing .Have a look ........http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html ,friend of mine had loads of trouble when he changed from bt to tiscali ,,,,,they changed his telephone number after he'd paid for advertising ,yellow pages etc...lost a lot of business.unusual but can happen 
),no complaints so far ,but the deals/speeds change so often its worth checking before changing .Have a look ........http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html ,friend of mine had loads of trouble when he changed from bt to tiscali ,,,,,they changed his telephone number after he'd paid for advertising ,yellow pages etc...lost a lot of business.unusual but can happen 
malcolm
& Clementine the Cat
- Messages
- 9,715
- Location
- Bedford UK
Still with ****calli MalcThe service resumed the other week (after problems) & to save time and disruption I stuck with em.
Which would you recommend then?
weldequip
I moved to Zen Internet a couple of weeks ago following a recommendation from your thread. They do seem very good, and I no longer have connection problems, slow loading, missing websites etc (an increasing problem with pile em high sell em cheap ISPs).
gavuk's link to compare ISPs is handy, also they have a forum with sections at the bottom where people discuss their ISPs. I looked through those until I found a section where people seemed generally happy.
- Messages
- 6,337
sorry
DNS is like a giant telephone book.
Computers on the net are identified by a unique ip address that looks like this :-
89.145.76.7
Its like a phone number to computers, with 89 being the main area code and so on, each seperated by the dots representing a different telephone switch on the way to it. Just a set of "routing" information in a machine readable form.
Now, you could have to type in http://89.145.76.7 which is a bit awkward to remember (and it could be much worse when ipv6 gets implemented as it will become something like http://2001:1888:0:1:2d0:b7ff:fe7d:bed6 ) so domain names were thought up to make human readable versions of this.
If you think of domain names as peoples names in the phone book, and the ip address as their telephone number its a valid analogy since the normal telephone system uses the phone number to route the call in a similar way.
So, you type in http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/ into your browser, your pc then goes off and asks the big telephone book operator for your area (your DNS server) who mig-welding.co.uk is. It will answer you "oh its 89.145.76.7" so your pc can then go ask your router to go to 89.145.76.7 for the mig-welding.co.uk website.
Theres a little more to it in that no one telephone operator has a book with EVERYONE in the world in it as that would be humongous and permanently changing, so when you ask your operator, it has to go off and ask someone (the root servers) who is responsible for that extension (eg .co.uk) who to ask, then asks them for who it is and so on down the tree. Itll remember the answer for a bit in its memory or cache as it is known, (for the length of time specified in the record ttl or time to live) in case anyone else asks it for the same place to save having to go through all that again. Its why sites like www.bbc.co.uk respond quickly, because theyre already resolved in the cache so the server doesnt have to go off and research the answer first.
Now you understand the concept of dns, you can guess the rather cryptic "dns error" means your pc asked your (isp's ) domain name server and it either couldnt find the answer in its telephone book, or it just plain old didnt answer (possibly network congestion or other problems). Hence dns error.
Ive been over thinking again havent I ? I bet your glad you went to watch the apprentice. However Ive just read zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and my brain is still wired...
Crickey
zardoz
Old school Socialist
- Messages
- 2,217
- Location
- Chetser, UK
for absolute rock solid service id say BT or whatever their isp is called this year. In fact, Any of the backbone providers should be similar. I was on it for 8 years and never went down once. Booted me off for contanly downing over 200Gigs per month though! Mind you i was a heavy Usenet user back than.
*chortle* BT. Yes they own the local loop, so whoever you buy adsl from will run on their circuits more or less. However, Im not sure currently id advocate them as my ISP provider...
Read :-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm
Then decide if you want all of your internet habits sent to a american company, linked in the past to some *VERY* dubious internet business practices, so they can insert their adverts in 3rd party webpages without your consent. But they won't tell anyone else about it, honest. And it was only a tiny tiny number of people on the trial (even if it did turn out to be tens of thousands of unsuspecting subscribers when the dirty linen came out for airing)
Oh they're planning a opt out, even though the uk regulator has said it would be only possibly legal if it were specifically opt in, but for the opt out you have to do it manually, and the opt out will last only until the router is rebooted, as its cookie based and looses the cookie on reboot.
You should also read this :-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/10/eu_bt_phorm_trial/
For the eu commisioner to take a interest on territory such as this, is quite clear that they feel a few bungs have happened to let someone off the hook.
I think its a very misguided direction for them to take, but the only way they will be steered away from abandoning someone's pet scheme is by public opinion turning when they realize what they are up to.
But, your choice. You may have nothing to hide. Enjoy the viagra spam.
Read :-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm
Then decide if you want all of your internet habits sent to a american company, linked in the past to some *VERY* dubious internet business practices, so they can insert their adverts in 3rd party webpages without your consent. But they won't tell anyone else about it, honest. And it was only a tiny tiny number of people on the trial (even if it did turn out to be tens of thousands of unsuspecting subscribers when the dirty linen came out for airing)
Oh they're planning a opt out, even though the uk regulator has said it would be only possibly legal if it were specifically opt in, but for the opt out you have to do it manually, and the opt out will last only until the router is rebooted, as its cookie based and looses the cookie on reboot.
You should also read this :-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/10/eu_bt_phorm_trial/
For the eu commisioner to take a interest on territory such as this, is quite clear that they feel a few bungs have happened to let someone off the hook.
I think its a very misguided direction for them to take, but the only way they will be steered away from abandoning someone's pet scheme is by public opinion turning when they realize what they are up to.
But, your choice. You may have nothing to hide. Enjoy the viagra spam.
