DNS Problem

[Time<%@ Page Language="C#" %><%= Request.Browser.Browser %>]

I just thought I'd let you know, but you seem to have a problem with your DNS server as the domain livingfrance.com does not resolve to anywhere and pinging the domain results in a 100% packet loss.

Might be an idea to sort this problem out so those of us who are too lazy to type http://www. into our browsers can get to the webpage.

I'd like 10% of all revenue created by the new traffic please

Tim

[George]

I just thought I'd let you know, but you seem to have a problem with your DNS server as the domain livingfrance.com does not resolve to anywhere and pinging the domain results in a 100% packet loss.
Might be an idea to sort this problem out so those of us who are too lazy to type http://www. into our browsers can get to the webpage.

 

Tim

Seems ok to me at the moment, this is the result I get when using ZoneEdit:-

livingfrance.com	NS	ns0.archant.net
livingfrance.com	NS	ns1.archant.net
livingfrance.com	NS	ns0.archant.net
livingfrance.com	NS	ns1.archant.net
ns0.archant.net	A	193.128.139.15
ns1.archant.net	A	193.128.139.16

 

[Time<%@ Page Language="C#" %><%= Request.Browser.Browser %>]

I'm still getting it - To quote the DOS prompt "Ping request could not find host livingfrance.com. Please check the name and try again.

Tracert brings back "Unable to resolve target system name livingfrance.com"

Under linux I get pretty much the same:

--

tim@localhost.localhost:~$ ping -c 5 livingfrance.com

ping: unknown host livingfrance.com

tim@localhost.localhost:~$ tracert livingfrance.com

traceroute: unknown host livingfrance.com

--

pinging/tracerouteing the www domain also drops 100% of it's packets, but does resolve the domain name (pinging ecng-iis.livingfrance.com)

Which is fine, simply means that the boys (or girls!) in the Archant IT dep have blocked ICMP (the "protocol" used for pings/traceroutes etc) - I've done that myself on my own domain for security measures.

However that should not stop the domain livingfrance.com resolving to an IP adress, which it currently does not do.. Try typing http://livingfrance.com or even just livingfrance.com into your browser adress bar, and you'll see what I mean.

Tim

[Tim Stephenson (Archant IS)]

In response...

1) Yes, we do block inbound ICMP at both an external router and firewall level.

2) If we didn't, pinging this wouldn't get you a server IP. You'll only be able to ping or trace to the loadbalancers. The network beyond that point is inaccessible from the outside world.

3) We don't tend to setup DNS records for the "domain" level hosts. i.e. we point www. mail. ftp. etc (whatever's needed) at the relevant servers, but don't tend to bother with the actual domain. Even if we did, this wouldn't get you a website as we only configure the "www" alias on the webservers. This is for two reasons - the administrative overhead of administering a large number of sites across multiple servers (the fewer host entries / aliases the better), and because our "publishers" tend to want to promote www.sometitlesname.com.

[Time<%@ Page Language="C#" %><%= Request.Browser.Browser %>]

Tim,

Well thats fair enough, I had a sneaking suspicion that might be the case.

However, you might want to google livingfrance.com sometime, and you'll notice that the single search result points to http://livingfrance.com - I think it's safe to assume that this is a remnant of the pre-archant days, but surely that cant be good for buisness.. Fair enough not resolving the domain names to the hosts/IP's - but when search results get involved, then thats a different kettle of fish.

The reason all this arose was becouse I deleted my browser-cache and wanted to keep my adress bar clear (for reasons best known to myself!) - so thus I thought I'd use the old google trick of searching for a domain and clicking the link. So popping livingfrance.com into google

( http://www.google.com/search?q=livingfrance.com&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 )

gave me the link I was after - only when I clicked it, it did not resolve.. I thought I'd best tell you about it and not having a direct line, made the post..

On an entirely un-related note, I'm curious to know what you do with hardware once you upgrade?!

All the best,

Tim E

[Dick Smith]

On an entirely un-related note, I'm curious to know what you do with hardware once you upgrade?!

Tim - you've seen the TV ad, surely? They become ultra battlebots or some such!

[Time<%@ Page Language="C#" %><%= Request.Browser.Browser %>]

Can't say I have seen that advert Dick.. I don't have sky??

[Hegs]

Tim,

What you are seeing here is not a real Google search showing an indexed entry. Google and other search engines try to figure out whether duplicates (mirrors, aliases) of sites exist to minimize the duplicated indexing of pages, and choose a "best" form called the canonicalized form or "alias master". www.<domain> vs <domain> is the most common, even trivial, form. But it does not necessarily follow that the www.<domain> form and <domain> actually contain the same content, so the search engines keep a list of equivalents.

Additionally, search engines tend to recognise users entering a hostname or domain name into the search box, and present a special results page showing data about the host, you can tell as there is only 1 result.  Otherwise http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22livingfrance+com%22 would show the same as your query.

However, this presents a problem, in that users may - like you - enter a slave version of the site name directly into the box, so there is some code that does a lookup of the canonicalized form and displays the same data as for the master. There is a minor difference in the abstract but that is probably due to the criteria for chosing whether a dynamic abstract - from the page content - or a static abstract - from the meta description tag - is chosen.