Without getting too technical, a DNS server takes a domain name (a web address like www.beachdog.com) and translates it to the IP address (the numeric address of the “host”, the computer where the files which make up the website of beachdog.com are residing, such as 72.52.177.88).  The hosting computer then directs from that number to the specific site files requested.  When all of that works the way it is supposed to, you type “www.beachdog.com” into your browser and *poof* you see our website.

After last month’s Friday the 13th Storm, as we’ve come to call it,  you may have guessed that we’d be moving sites off the host server that caused everyone’s head (and heart) -aches.   To do that, we first moved the files and programs that make up the websites to a new host computer.  Then we changed the DNS, meaning we told the internet world to look at a different numeric address when asked for these websites.  Typically, it takes 2-3 days for all the computers around the world to notice the change and update themselves accordingly.  In the meanwhile, we keep your site on both old and new hosts.  This way, it doesn’t matter which copy folks see; they see the same thing.  That’s why most of you don’t know about these things; you don’t typically know, as a site visitor, when changes like this are made.

So when, nearly a week after our 2-3 day switch should have been completed, we had a handful of clients phone or email with reports that some of their customers couldn’t see some of our sites, Karl dove right into troubleshooting mode.  These kinds of issues are typically pretty logical;  we flow chart our way through them, eliminating likely causes until we drill down on the culprit.  This being a Friday the 13th story, you knew it wasn’t going to be that straightforward here, right?   Because the problem wasn’t happening to all of the clients who should have been affected if one was and it also wasn’t happening for all of the customers of any one site, troubleshooting became quite a puzzle.

We were first able to narrow the field to a couple of internet service providers (ISPs) who shall, in the name of professionalism, go unnamed.  After literally dozens of harrowing phone calls, we were finally able to convince these two companies that they really were a common thread in the puzzle and they updated the DNS numbers at their sites.  This resolved the problem for the vast majority of those having trouble seeing our sites.

However, this past week, nearly a month after the change should have completed, we received a few calls from folks who were still unable to see our sites, any of the sites that had been moved in the same block as their own site.  This time, it wasn’t the customers who were complaining to them; it was their own ability to view the sites.  Karl, our man for the job, was quick to dive in and look for some common thread between the complaints.  Sure enough, all of these folks were connecting to the internet through the same, a third, ISP.

I had a doctor once that told me he preferred looking at all the horses before claiming to see a zebra in a patient’s complaint.  I’ve always liked that metaphor.

Karl methodically went through all the probable causes.  Then he exhausted all the possible causes.  Finally, he went hunting for zebras.  Ultimately, he discovered that some of our clients had been with their ISP for so long,  they were set up to connect to that ISP through the oldest of equipment.  Since they’d never had need to call in with a technical issue, nobody had ever updated the settings in their computers to have them connect through the newer equipment.  As a result, they were still using the oldest, slowest, most outdated computers at the ISP in order to connect to the internet.  These dinosaurs of web servers were simply taking waaaaay longer than anyone would expect to catch up with the changes–not just for our sites, but around the globe.

I should interject that “dinosaur” in techno-world isn’t as old as you’d think.  After all, the internet itself is barely a teenager in human years.  But I digress.

All of this rambling is really to give you instructions for how to avoid this problem yourselves. There are a few global sites that offer DNS service free of charge.  These seem to update extremely quickly; less than a day in most cases.  One such site is called OpenDNS.  By using a service like Open DNS you essentially tell your computer, “Don’t look at my ISP to figure out where a website’s files are.  Look at these guys instead”.  And, by doing this, you’re ensuring more recent, accurate information for yourself when you surf the web.

Go to https://www.opendns.com/start: