Duff beer
11th Dec 2006, 08:35
guys,
with a strong wireless connection a few web-sites download vey quickly (thankfully pprune!) whilst most though, eg Hotmail, wikipedia, show the 'waiting for......' message in the bottom corner.
Does anyone know why this has started to happen and how I sort it out.
thanks........
batninth
14th Dec 2006, 19:24
DB,
That looks to me much like a problem at your ISP, certainly your wireless connection (or any other connection for that matter) doesn't understand which web site you're trying to access.
What is most likely happening is that somewhere in ISP HQ (ie a dingy basement) there is a Domain Name Server ("DNS") that is having problems resolving the names of the web sites you have put in. Some of the web sites have been accessed recently, before Dick the DNS got it's electronic knickers in a twist, so their addresses are still hanging around & hence you resolve them quickly (it may even be that they're cached on your local PC) whereas other site addresses have been cleared recently so your computer is asking for the addresses to resolved...and that is where the delay comes in.
Certainly our NTL connection is prone to this problem and the symptoms are exactly as you say above - some sites are accessed pretty much instantly, whereas others take a long time or even never get resolved.
The bad news is that there isn't much you can do when this happens other than gripe at your ISP. The alternative is to do what my son does which is to set his PC to use a good DNS server (in his case the one on the public side at his university) in which case it takes a tad longer to resolve the addresses but it keeps on working when NTL fails. Personally, I prefer the "shout at ISP" route"!