DNS Issues?

[Shamonemofo]

Had problems most of last night with many sites and apps timing out with the message  ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED.

Anyone know what the cause/fix? 

[Highlinder]

Are you able to give us some examples of the sites that would not resolve for you last night and are they still doing this same this morning.

[Shamonemofo]

Hi, yes sure.

Examples are: sky.com ebay.co.uk bbc.co.uk

All ok this morning too. At first I thought it was just the Apps, but opening a browser and navigating directly to the sites gave the same results. Also the same on my wife's phone.

All worked when I  switched off WiFi and used my mobile network so I know the sites were working.

[Highlinder]

The sites in question was part of the Fastly outage that happened yesterday and was widely reported on sicial media and on the news websites.

[Shamonemofo]

Hi, you've not digested my reply 🙂

The sites all worked when I turned off WiFi and used my mobiles network, so it was a Sky issue.

[Highlinder]

This was not just a Sky issue, the link below is a pinned post giving the full time line of the internet outage.

https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Websites/Global-internet-outage/m-p/3706939#M8591 

[Cactuars]

Hey,

I've been having exactly the same issue over the past few days. I can confirm that this was happening prior to the Fastly outage yesterday, so I genuinely do not believe the two are related.

The issue in a nutshell:

At certain times during the day (appears to be 07:55am, oddly), all devices connected to the Sky router can no longer access certain websites and apps. These include anything Microsoft related, as well as Amazon. A restart of the router fixes this problem for a short while. Other websites and apps work completely fine. Disconnecting the device from Wi-Fi shows that said sites are up and running perfectly fine.

The issue persists on all devices, whether they are connected via Wi-Fi or through ethernet. 

The error displayed states: DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN.

To try and remedy this, I changed the default DNS to Google's (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) on two of my devices, while my partner left hers on automatic. 

As expected, this morning at 07:55am Amazon and Xbox were unavailable on my partner's phone, and both worked just fine on my device which was using Google's DNS. Both remained connected to the router. I am certain that this is a Sky DNS issue.

I have tried all suggested troubleshooting steps, such as disabling Sky Shield, turning the router off and leaving it for 30 mins, and the issue still persists.

My mum is having exactly the same issue and she lives 3 miles down the road. Sky is her ISP too.

I called Sky to try and have this issue resolved, but I don't think the advisor on the phone really knew what to do, and felt out of her depth. Following her guide, a new router was recommended, however Sky wanted to charge me £40 for the privilege, which I of course declined. The advisor spoke to her manager, the cancellations team, and other colleagues, and as a business Sky were unwilling to budge and were adamant that I would need to pay for a new router. Instead I've got an engineer coming to the property next week. 

Looking over the forums I don't believe that I am alone with this issue. 

Are Sky aware of any DNS issues?

[TimmyBGood]

@Cactuars 

I'd suggest that if they could confidently discuss the intricacies of DNS, they wouldn't be reading a script in a call centre ; )  As you identified, a replacement router is very unlikely to provide a solution, particularly as DNS resolution is almost entirely an upstream function.

We suspect Sky (like other ISPs) does interesting things with DNS within their own networks as part of providing both the Government mandated filtering and their commercial offering (Broadband Shield / Broadband Buddy) and this does sometimes misfire.

[Shamonemofo]

Is it possible to change the default DNS set in the router from Sky's servers to Google's?

I'm in the router config but can't see the option to change it.

[Cactuars]

Unfortunately not, it's locked.

[Shamonemofo]

The problem is back now - Getting DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN for Amazon.co.uk

[Cactuars]

@Shamonemofo I'd advise switching your device's DNS to Google's, and that should serve as a temporary fix for that particular device.

Not sure if I can post links, but here's a guide: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using 

If the link doesn't work, just Google search "how to change my DNS to Google's" and there should be a boat load of results for you to work through.

That's what we've done whilst waiting for an official fix.

[Shamonemofo]

OK just changed the Windows network adaptor settings to use Google's DNS servers and it works  - Switching back to automatic to use Sky's DNS servers and it fails.

SKy please fix this and stop saying ity's not your issue.

[DavePudding]

It's happening again, definitely sky. In fact I could not reach this page without first switching off wifi on my phone. I work in IT and this is a DNS issue which only seems to affect Sky DNS servers. Sort it!!

[Azza009]

This has been happening to me throughout the last 24 hours too..  Certain websites eg Microsoft, EBay etc don't load.  Some time later they're fine and then they go back

to not loading again.  No access via apps either, and images, videos etc from various sources don't load via Twitter either.

This is obviously very much a Sky issue.  And it needs sorting out.  I've just signed up for another 18 months, and don't want to be having to switch to use my mobile data when I want to view certain websites for the next 18 months.