February, 2009 archive

Comcast DNS sucks - Host not found errors

February 6, 2009

In the past few days I started having problems at home with my internet connection. For every page that I was trying to visit I would get, most of the times, a "Host not found" error and after refreshing a couple of times then the page would finally load up.

Initially I thought this to be a Windows problem so I played with the settings of the DNS Client but to no success. I also rebooted my router and modem a few times, again, without solving anything. Then, I remembered that my problems started just after installing Sun's VirtualBox and setting up a Ubuntu machine. I thought that maybe one of the devices VirtualBox installed broke something in Windows. After disabling the devices, completely removing them and even uninstalling VirtualBox, the problem was still there.

Finally, after giving it more thought, I configured my router to use the free OpenDNS service and all my issues were gone. No more errors, no more refreshing every page at least 4 times for it to load, no more gray hairs. Just by changing the DNS servers used by the router I got rid of all the problems. With OpenDNS you even get additional services, so it's no brainer that that's what I will keep using for the rest of my Comcast cable internet user days.

Copyright © 2008 Mihail Ovidiu Pascut