Cannot access AWF

[georgedwilkinson]

MSAccessRookie tells me that he has not been able to access AWF since last week from his work. Here is one of the PMs I received from Rookie on my FB:

The SA for my company has indicated that additional testing for access to the AWF Site over the weekend has located a number of additional places where the TCPIP Address has not been updated, including additional locations in New Jersey, New York City, Seattle Washington, and Belgrade Serbia. It was available in about 10 additional sites that we have access to. The SA has indicated that although what you said will work, and that we can do this, he feels that this is a bigger problem that AWF needs to be made aware of. I also believe that he will not want to have to do this again when there is another major upgrade of the AWF Server.

BTW, the thing I recommended he do is to put AWF in his hosts file.

This might explain why the traffic on AWF seems to be lower than before.

 

[Jon]

Thanks for informing me of this George. Is he stating that AWF is not showing in some areas, such as New York? What makes you think that traffic is lower?

 

[rainman89]

Thanks for informing me of this George. Is he stating that AWF is not showing in some areas, such as New York? What makes you think that traffic is lower?

Im in NY and I see it fine

 

[Vassago]

Yeah, this sounds like it might be a problem on his end. My friends in New York and New Jersey I sent the link to see the website just fine.

 

[georgedwilkinson]

Jon, you might want to hold off on taking any action. Further PMs from Rookie may indicate that at least one of their domain controllers had the old IP address in their hosts file.

The value currently in my workstation HOSTS file is correct, but the DOMAIN Server HOSTS file is not showing the right address.

I don't really know the details so I suggest you wait until one of us hears back from Rookie.

If this turns out to be a false alarm, I'll delete the thread (or you can, at your discretion).

I was thinking the traffic was lower because there is much less "banter" than usual. It is totally subjective on my part.

 

[Jon]

I will hold fire then.

 

[MSAccessRookie]

Jon, you might want to hold off on taking any action. Further PMs from Rookie may indicate that at least one of their domain controllers had the old IP address in their hosts file.


I don't really know the details so I suggest you wait until one of us hears back from Rookie.

If this turns out to be a false alarm, I'll delete the thread (or you can, at your discretion).

I was thinking the traffic was lower because there is much less "banter" than usual. It is totally subjective on my part.

Greetings, Salutations, and Thanks to all that have responded thus far, with a special thanks to georgewilkinson. I would like to clarify a point that I was not clear on the last time I PMed George. The Domain Server has no entry for AWF. It is getting the information that is provided from the outside provider. The information that it receives is incorrect, and is in fact, the information related to the old AWF Server. I am not an expert in this area and am not sure how to proceed.

Rookie

 

[Brianwarnock]

Good to see Rookie is on.

Brian

 

[MSAccessRookie]

Good to see Rookie is on.

Brian

Thanks Brian, but actually, I am not on. My SA has provided me with a laptop that is outside of the company domain for me to use until this problem is resolved. I am sure the loan is going to be for short term at best, so I am still looking for a chance to resolve the problems

 

[georgedwilkinson]

I think that's the word we were waiting for, Jon. Seems there is an issue with propagating the new IP address, I guess. The IP address I have is 64.57.208.119, which seems to work just fine.

 

[MSAccessRookie]

I think that's the word we were waiting for, Jon. Seems there is an issue with propagating the new IP address, I guess. The IP address I have is 64.57.208.119, which seems to work just fine.

I have the same addres here on both of my machines, but the Domain Server (which has no hard coded entry for AWF), is still trying to connect to the old address. I have no idea what I can do about it.

 

[vbaInet]

Can't remember much about networking, but maybe they need to Renew DNS and clear the cache.

 

[MSAccessRookie]

Can't remember much about networking, but maybe they need to Renew DNS and clear the cache.

Unfortunately, I know even less. What I do know is that the outside service still has the incorrect address (although I have no idea as to how to prove that to be true)

 

[vbaInet]

By clearing the DNS cache and renew IP and/or DNS they might be able to overcome this problem. I can't remember the commands. Maybe your SA would know better.

 

[Banana]

Rookie -

If you have the admin privilege on your computer, try and set up OpenDNS (they have a handy guide at their site) - I doubt that your company will allow you to do that but I was able to do so for one of my old job (it also helped that I had good relations with the IT manager there and was thus de facto IT guy for the branch office).

It's like day/night using OpenDNS instead of default ISP's DNS which tends to chomp green donkey's nuts hard.

 

[MSAccessRookie]

By clearing the DNS cache and renew IP and/or DNS they might be able to overcome this problem. I can't remember the commands. Maybe your SA would know better.

The actions that you describe (clearing the cache and renewing the IP addresses) were taken by the SA Group last Friday late in the afternoon as one of their first attempts to resolve the issue. At the time, I was advised that the refresh could take as long as 6-10 hours before it was completed, so I decided to wait until Monday and then try again. As of this morning, the problem was not resolved, and in fact, it persists at this time. The SA Group is convinced that there are steps that AWF needs to take to resolve this, and since I am not an expert in this area, I am unable to disagree with their assessment.

 

[MSAccessRookie]

Rookie -

If you have the admin privilege on your computer, try and set up OpenDNS (they have a handy guide at their site) - I doubt that your company will allow you to do that but I was able to do so for one of my old job (it also helped that I had good relations with the IT manager there and was thus de facto IT guy for the branch office).

It's like day/night using OpenDNS instead of default ISP's DNS which tends to chomp green donkey's nuts hard.

I do not have the authority to do what you are suggesting. Only memers of the SA Group (which I am not) would be able to do that. Besides, as you pointed out, the head SA would probably not go for any changes like that. It was hard enough to get enough resources allocated to identify that the suspected cause of the problem was the external ISP Name Services as opposed to something related to the network.

 

[vbaInet]

Hard to argue with the Network guys especially if you're not well versed in that area. I can't think of any other ways of resolving the problem. But surely, if you can access it outside of the network, it would be something they need to resolve.

Did they tell you what steps AWF should take to resolve this issue?

 

[MSAccessRookie]

Hard to argue with the Network guys especially if you're not well versed in that area. I can't think of any other ways of resolving the problem. But surely, if you can access it outside of the network, it would be something they need to resolve.

Did they tell you what steps AWF should take to resolve this issue?

Good question, but no answer. I got the idea that it was beyond my ability to completely comprehend. I suspect that I would have understood just about enough to get myself in trouble, and not enough to be of any real use in resolving the problem.

 

[vbaInet]

Let's see what Jon thinks.