I thought that campus-wide outages were going to be posted on the Computer
Lab Status page? http://help.msu.edu/status/  There is nothing about an
outage posted, therefore it never happened(?)

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Katie Clark [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Friday, October 31, 2003 9:22 AM
To:     <a href="/cgi-bin/wa?LOGON=A3%3Dind0311%26L%3DMSUNAG%26E%3D0%26P%3D28308%26B%3D--%26T%3Dtext%252Fplain%3B%2520charset%3Diso-8859-1" target="_parent" >[log in to unmask]</a>
Subject:        Re: dialup DNS problems

There was a campus wide outage last night, it started around 11p.  I know
there was no connection to the outside world, and that a lot of internal msu
networks were down also.  There is a system status listed on the
help.msu.edu website.

Maybe Doug or Joe can shed more light on what happened and what was
specifically affected?

Katie Clark
National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory
Michigan State University
517.333.6338

-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Lee Duynslager
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 9:20 AM
To: <a href="/cgi-bin/wa?LOGON=A3%3Dind0311%26L%3DMSUNAG%26E%3D0%26P%3D28308%26B%3D--%26T%3Dtext%252Fplain%3B%2520charset%3Diso-8859-1" target="_parent" >[log in to unmask]</a>
Subject: Re: dialup DNS problems


I too have experienced problems with name resolution, last night I had a
problem around 11:00, where I could ping other ip addresses, but I was not
able to resolve host names.

Some of my users have had the same problems when they are on travel dialing
up and using the M.S.U. DNS servers.   The only way I was able to resolve
these problems for them was to use a DNS from University of Michigan.  This
makes me think this might be a problem with our DNS servers.

Has anybody out there had similar experiences?

Lee Duynslager
Information Technologist
Integrated Plant Systems
Michigan State University

(517) 432-5296


-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Patrick S Bills
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 12:10 AM
To: <a href="/cgi-bin/wa?LOGON=A3%3Dind0311%26L%3DMSUNAG%26E%3D0%26P%3D28308%26B%3D--%26T%3Dtext%252Fplain%3B%2520charset%3Diso-8859-1" target="_parent" >[log in to unmask]</a>
Subject: dialup DNS problems

MSU Network Experts,


I've had, and heard of, a few problems with dial-up  that seem to be related
to the Win200 DNS client,  so I'm looking for advice from folks in this
list.  Rich W. long ago asked for experiences with campus dialup.  This is
in part a late answer to that. I prob. shouldn't bother this list - but I'm
at a loss as to what to do.

Here is my (probably ignorant) question: do MSU DNS server block specific
clients, similar to the DHCP blocking strategy?

The symptom is DNS unresponsiveness when dialed in, and in one case even
on-campus ethernet, using Windows 2000.  But let's consider just dial-up to
start.


System:
Windows 2000 (all patched up, no worms detected), no firewall software, NAV
corporate, DCOM disabled.

Symptoms:

After dialing in and checking the ipconfig, the computer is assigned a host
& DNS addresses by the DHCP server (see output below).  However, when using
any network software, 'unknown host' or similar errors, e.g. ping,
webbrowser, etc.

Sometimes nslookup will return an IP given a host name, even though other
apps (including ping) cannot, but nslookup does not always work. In the
latest case (late Th. night) nslookup will provide MSU host addresses, but
no external hosts, even with timeout set for 10 seconds.  I've tried
explicitly setting the DNS to the (...41 and ...42) and also DHCP (which
comes back with radius5.merit.edu). Same behavior. In fact using nslookup
and changing the lookup-server there makes no difference.

I'm convinced the problem is mine, and not the computer lab servers.  In one
case I uninstalled/reinstalled the TCP/IP protocol in Windows 2000 and the
problem was fixed (caveman-style configuration editing). But I've found that
doesn't always work, and I've heard from a few other users who've had this
trouble, which leads me to wonder where the problem actually is.

 Any hints on how to attack this problem? Thanks for any and all input!

    --- An MSU network user.


sample IP config output:
PPP adapter MSU:

        Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
        Description . . . . . . . . . . . : WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface
        Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-53-45-00-00-00
        DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
        IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 35.12.19.54
        Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
        Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 35.12.19.54
        DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 35.9.10.6
                                            35.9.10.8
        NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled



ps. I'm using pilot for mail becuase mail.msu.edu won't work with just an ip
in the browser.  I will miss telnet!

..........................................................
Patrick Bills                             <a href="/cgi-bin/wa?LOGON=A3%3Dind0311%26L%3DMSUNAG%26E%3D0%26P%3D28308%26B%3D--%26T%3Dtext%252Fplain%3B%2520charset%3Diso-8859-1" target="_parent" >[log in to unmask]</a>
Michigan State University                 tel 517/432-0849
East Lansing  MI  48824