Virgin Media UK Joins BT to Suffer Website DNS Problems - ISPreview UK
Customers of Virgin Medias cable broadband network have become the latest to be hit by an unusual bout of website access problems after the ISPs Domain Name Servers (DNS), which translate Internet (IP) addresses into human readable form and vice versa, seemed to become faulty. Sadly its not the first time this has happened.
The Domain Name Servers are a key component of the Internet and most ISPs use them to covert IP addresses (e.g. 123.45.53.89 [IPv4]) into domain names (e.g. example.uk) and back again. But various issues, such as bad peering / routing and administrative errors, have been known to throw the odd spanner into the works. Problems like this can result in websites becoming slow to load, redirecting you to the wrong site or even failing to load the desired website / server (this is sometimes fixable after several refresh attempts).
On Saturday BT also suffered a similar problem, which lasted for an hour and appeared to sporadically affect their retail broadband subscribers across much of the United Kingdom. BT later apologised for the issue but has still failed to clarify precisely what caused the problem.
Similarly a number of Virgin Medias customers also reported DNS related issues on Friday 27th June 2014, which appeared to affect some customers but not others. The problems then reoccurred on Monday and Tuesday of this week, although curiously Virgin Media chose not to reference the problem on their status page and some support staff initially denied that the ISP was suffering any such issues.
As with most DNS related issues, including the fault on BTs network, the problems can often be temporarily resolved by customers swapping their Primary and Secondary IP DNS settings to those of Googles Public DNS or OpenDNS etc. But not everybody is comfortable with doing this and the SuperHub router wont allow it, so you have to make the adjusted on each individual computer/device instead.
The good news is that Virgin Media are now admitting to the fault, via way of the same general statement given to anybody who asks, although just like BT theyre not saying what the cause was. We are sorry for those customers who experienced only intermittent access to certain websites for approximately an hour last night, said a spokeswoman for the operator.
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Customers of Virgin Medias cable broadband network have become the latest to be hit by an unusual bout of website access problems after the ISPs Domain Name Servers (DNS), which translate Internet (IP) addresses into human readable form and vice versa, seemed to become faulty. Sadly its not the first time this has happened.
The Domain Name Servers are a key component of the Internet and most ISPs use them to covert IP addresses (e.g. 123.45.53.89 [IPv4]) into domain names (e.g. example.uk) and back again. But various issues, such as bad peering / routing and administrative errors, have been known to throw the odd spanner into the works. Problems like this can result in websites becoming slow to load, redirecting you to the wrong site or even failing to load the desired website / server (this is sometimes fixable after several refresh attempts).
On Saturday BT also suffered a similar problem, which lasted for an hour and appeared to sporadically affect their retail broadband subscribers across much of the United Kingdom. BT later apologised for the issue but has still failed to clarify precisely what caused the problem.
Similarly a number of Virgin Medias customers also reported DNS related issues on Friday 27th June 2014, which appeared to affect some customers but not others. The problems then reoccurred on Monday and Tuesday of this week, although curiously Virgin Media chose not to reference the problem on their status page and some support staff initially denied that the ISP was suffering any such issues.
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VM Customer heavensent said:
I had DNS issues on Friday as well. Virgin knew nothing about it apparently. I spoke to a couple of their tech supports yesterday. The first one denied there had been a DNS issue. The second confirmed that there had been DNS problems on Friday but they had been resolved. He said it was affecting random customers all over the UK. [I'm in Fife]
This evening Ive started having the same problems I was having on Friday. Ive changed to Google DNS and hey presto it appears to have solved the intermittent disconnects.
Its ridiculous that Virgin are in denial about this. One reason Im taking my business elsewhere.
I had DNS issues on Friday as well. Virgin knew nothing about it apparently. I spoke to a couple of their tech supports yesterday. The first one denied there had been a DNS issue. The second confirmed that there had been DNS problems on Friday but they had been resolved. He said it was affecting random customers all over the UK. [I'm in Fife]
This evening Ive started having the same problems I was having on Friday. Ive changed to Google DNS and hey presto it appears to have solved the intermittent disconnects.
Its ridiculous that Virgin are in denial about this. One reason Im taking my business elsewhere.
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VM Customer Mr-Hare said:
I had DNS issues for most of Friday like a lot of others. It started working again later that evening but tonight Im back to getting the slow loading or none at all. As soon as I change to Google DNS settings it works perfectly so it isnt something my end.
Its getting ridiculous now that it can keep happening randomly for this amount of time.
I had DNS issues for most of Friday like a lot of others. It started working again later that evening but tonight Im back to getting the slow loading or none at all. As soon as I change to Google DNS settings it works perfectly so it isnt something my end.
Its getting ridiculous now that it can keep happening randomly for this amount of time.
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VM Customer simacca added:
Internet is intermittently slow this evening. Havent had this problem before. Power levels are ok and speedtest results are fine when the page decides to load that is.
Same is happening on phone and tablets. Have reset the hub, laptop and gadgets, but still the same.
Sometimes the web page will load straight away, sometimes it hangs for ages or deosnt load at all??
Can you tell me if there is a fault, as your status page is saying everything is ok in my area.
Internet is intermittently slow this evening. Havent had this problem before. Power levels are ok and speedtest results are fine when the page decides to load that is.
Same is happening on phone and tablets. Have reset the hub, laptop and gadgets, but still the same.
Sometimes the web page will load straight away, sometimes it hangs for ages or deosnt load at all??
Can you tell me if there is a fault, as your status page is saying everything is ok in my area.
The good news is that Virgin Media are now admitting to the fault, via way of the same general statement given to anybody who asks, although just like BT theyre not saying what the cause was. We are sorry for those customers who experienced only intermittent access to certain websites for approximately an hour last night, said a spokeswoman for the operator.