Any other Comcast users getting "server not found" messages?

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philb2

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 26, 2021
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When I click on a link, I sometimes have to press the Try Again button 3-4-5 or more times before the web page is displayed.
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I have reset the cable modem (via Comcast signal) and power-cycled my router. This problem has been observed on three different Windows systems in my house.
 
Keep a running ping going to a few sites so you can see exactly if/when your connection is cutting out. Open a command prompt and type "ping 8.8.8.8 -t" (without the quotes). You can sub out 8.8.8.8 for any website or IP address.

If your connection doesn't seem to be cutting out, then it might be a DNS issue (websites not resolving to an IP address). In that case you can switch to a 3rd party DNS server that is more reliable.
 
Mine is up and running fine.

I do use Quad 9 as my DNS though, if that matters.
 
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Fine here too in bay area....

I would try booting a linux live cd and see if you have the same issue just to rule out windows or malware or both.
 
GotNoRice said:
Keep a running ping going to a few sites so you can see exactly if/when your connection is cutting out. Open a command prompt and type "ping 8.8.8.8 -t" (without the quotes). You can sub out 8.8.8.8 for any website or IP address.

If your connection doesn't seem to be cutting out, then it might be a DNS issue (websites not resolving to an IP address). In that case you can switch to a 3rd party DNS server that is more reliable.
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I appreciate it that there is could be a DNS issue. I was just wondering how widespread this issue is.

Right now I'm in a shop, and the ping operation here looks completely normal.
 
philb2 said:
I appreciate it that there is could be a DNS issue. I was just wondering how widespread this issue is.

Right now I'm in a shop, and the ping operation here looks completely normal.
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If ping is normal, then dns is the issue. You can try using the common 8.8.8.8 one or various others out there. They should work unless you have something else going on (dns hijacking?).
 
OK, a bit of an update. I've been slowed down by a recent case of Covid. When I was discharged, the doctor and the nurse warned me that I might be very tired for a week or so. They were wrong. It's almost 3 weeks and I'm still almost wiped out, which completely destroys my "productivity.":

I have also had issues with my router where the 5.0 band quit working for a while, so I suspected that the radio was failing and I switched everything to the 2.4 band. Same issues, so I'm ready to try a public DNS. Based on some searches, I'm switching to Cloudflare. Here is an interesting reference site: https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-resolvers

I did read the Cloudflare privacy policy carefully.

Maybe I'm overly suspicious, but somehow I don't trust Google's DNS to protect privacy. And no way Jose, would I ever use the Yandex DNS, even if it had the best performance in the world, LOL.

I'll report back in a week or so.
 
Hasnt comcast had massive DNS issues several summers in the mid 2010's? Thought I remember them having large DNS failures that took a while to fix?
 
philb2 said:
OK, a bit of an update. I've been slowed down by a recent case of Covid. When I was discharged, the doctor and the nurse warned me that I might be very tired for a week or so. They were wrong. It's almost 3 weeks and I'm still almost wiped out, which completely destroys my "productivity.":

I have also had issues with my router where the 5.0 band quit working for a while, so I suspected that the radio was failing and I switched everything to the 2.4 band. Same issues, so I'm ready to try a public DNS. Based on some searches, I'm switching to Cloudflare. Here is an interesting reference site: https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-resolvers

I did read the Cloudflare privacy policy carefully.

Maybe I'm overly suspicious, but somehow I don't trust Google's DNS to protect privacy. And no way Jose, would I ever use the Yandex DNS, even if it had the best performance in the world, LOL.

I'll report back in a week or so.
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What's your router? Asus routers (even Merlin-WRT) had a bug in a recent firmware that really messed up WiFi and stability all around. The most recent Merlin (387_2, I think?) Fixes it.
 
philb2 said:
OK, a bit of an update. I've been slowed down by a recent case of Covid. When I was discharged, the doctor and the nurse warned me that I might be very tired for a week or so. They were wrong. It's almost 3 weeks and I'm still almost wiped out, which completely destroys my "productivity.":

I have also had issues with my router where the 5.0 band quit working for a while, so I suspected that the radio was failing and I switched everything to the 2.4 band. Same issues, so I'm ready to try a public DNS. Based on some searches, I'm switching to Cloudflare. Here is an interesting reference site: https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-resolvers

I did read the Cloudflare privacy policy carefully.

Maybe I'm overly suspicious, but somehow I don't trust Google's DNS to protect privacy. And no way Jose, would I ever use the Yandex DNS, even if it had the best performance in the world, LOL.

I'll report back in a week or so.
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Glad you're covering. It wiped my dad off this planet. :( You may even have some long term effects so just plan for that and ease back into everything gradually.

For DNS, I moved away from all of these to the one set up for use by Canada and have had good results:
https://www.cira.ca/cybersecurity-s...y-cira-canadian-shield-dns-resolver-addresses
 
TheSlySyl said:
What's your router? Asus routers (even Merlin-WRT) had a bug in a recent firmware that really messed up WiFi and stability all around. The most recent Merlin (387_2, I think?) Fixes it.
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NetGear Nighthawk X6. Now that I've switched to Cloudflare, I'm getting fast responses to links and with no "server not found" messages. I'll post more in about a week.
 
ChRoNo16 said:
Hasnt comcast had massive DNS issues several summers in the mid 2010's? Thought I remember them having large DNS failures that took a while to fix?
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Most of the Comcast DNS issues I remember were when other people mess up DNSSEC and Comcast DNS does the right thing and refuses to accept improper signatures when the domain was supposed to be signed. Not sure if any other major ISP or public recursive DNS actually checks DNSSEC though, so it looks malicious when a big streaming service doesn't work on Comcast, but then it turns out the service broke it themselves.
 
Vengance_01 said:
Change your dns servers to non Comcast ones as you will be fine :) or better yet run your own using pi-hole 😉
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Yeah, I switched over to using adguardhome as my DNS (basically a pi-hole, but a bit more user-friendly.) and my network is way, way happier and i'm loving just how well it blocks stuff. It's also faster than using quad9 as DNS.
 
TheSlySyl said:
Yeah, I switched over to using adguardhome as my DNS (basically a pi-hole, but a bit more user-friendly.) and my network is way, way happier and i'm loving just how well it blocks stuff. It's also faster than using quad9 as DNS.
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TheSlySyl

I appreciate the suggestion, but I would have to justify to She Who Must Be Obeyed why I need to install YAB (Yet Another Box) either upstairs or downstairs. Easier just to use Cloudflare DNS. :D
 
philb2 said:
TheSlySyl

I appreciate the suggestion, but I would have to justify to She Who Must Be Obeyed why I need to install YAB (Yet Another Box) either upstairs or downstairs. Easier just to use Cloudflare DNS. :D
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That's why I like the Canadian solution--just change the dns records in the router and be done. Plus, it's backed by a nation-state and not just a company.
 
It's been about a week now since I set my desktop, laptop and my wife's laptop to Cloudflare DNS. I changed switched the IP V6 entries from Automatic to the Cloudflare servers. NO MORE ERROR messages, so I have to assume that the issue is in Comcast's network. Quel surprise, as they say in France. What a surprise!

That's important, because I was going to either get some Ethernet over powerline adapters, OR a new router, probably a mesh system.
 
I've gotten that error on a win10 laptop but I think there its just a dying 5ghz radio in the laptop. No issues here otherwise from comcast. Glad you got it working.
 
philb2 said:
It's been about a week now since I set my desktop, laptop and my wife's laptop to Cloudflare DNS. I changed switched the IP V6 entries from Automatic to the Cloudflare servers. NO MORE ERROR messages, so I have to assume that the issue is in Comcast's network. Quel surprise, as they say in France. What a surprise!

That's important, because I was going to either get some Ethernet over powerline adapters, OR a new router, probably a mesh system.
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It's always a good idea to move away from DNS servers that don't have the same goals as you do. ;)
 
SamirD said:
It's always a good idea to move away from DNS servers that don't have the same goals as you do. ;)
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I never thought of a DNS server as a sentient being. More like, the admins of the DNS servers don't share my goals. :)
 
philb2 said:
OK, a bit of an update. I've been slowed down by a recent case of Covid. When I was discharged, the doctor and the nurse warned me that I might be very tired for a week or so. They were wrong. It's almost 3 weeks and I'm still almost wiped out, which completely destroys my "productivity.":

I have also had issues with my router where the 5.0 band quit working for a while, so I suspected that the radio was failing and I switched everything to the 2.4 band. Same issues, so I'm ready to try a public DNS. Based on some searches, I'm switching to Cloudflare. Here is an interesting reference site: https://www.dnsperf.com/#!dns-resolvers

I did read the Cloudflare privacy policy carefully.

Maybe I'm overly suspicious, but somehow I don't trust Google's DNS to protect privacy. And no way Jose, would I ever use the Yandex DNS, even if it had the best performance in the world, LOL.

I'll report back in a week or so.
Click to expand...
Update on my switch to Cloudflare DNS. It's been almost 3 weeks since this last post.

No more issues with the 5.0 band on my Netgear router. NO MORE issues with website not found. In fact, NO issues at all with Cloudflare. It just works. I'm good:)
 
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