Rogers DNS outage
Rogers customers are currently experiencing service disruptions due to what appears to be a problem with their DNS servers. DNS or Domain Name System is what the internet uses to translate Server IP addresses into Server names. For example www.cbc.ca actually has the IP address http://159.33.3.85 If you click on the second link you will go to the same webpage.
Since it’s far easier to remember names then numbers DNS does the heavily lifting for us. If the service does not work then you can’t use server names. Normally your router gets the DNS server addresses from your ISP, but you don’t have to use the ones that your ISP provides. Several other services such as Google and open DNS provide this service.
If you are fairly comfortable poking around your router’s config page then go to the network settings and change the value from auto to 2 of the options below.
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
Open DNS
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
(Thanks to Derek Silva at Cleverhost for tweeting this first)
Save the config and reboot your router, then reboot/reconnect with each computer/smart phone/tablet you have.
I’ve also made a screencast of how to do these changes for a mac.
Update: 9:40 pm
Rogers is tweeting that service should be coming back.
Internet issues some wireline / wireless customers were experiencing should now
be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) September 30, 2012
Thanks for the two alternate dns servers. A good thing to put down on paper or word doc for the next time Rogers is out.
You can leave the settings as is to bypass rogers entirely. I use one from Google and one from Open Dns the liklyhood of both being down is very very rare.