RunningAHEAD - Topic: Service interruption update (Mar 11, 2007)

Administration > News and Announcements > Service interruption update (Mar 11, 2007)

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Service interruption update (Mar 11, 2007) (Read 732 times)

posted: 3/11/2007 at 8:02 PM

GoDaddy.com had an unspecified technical difficulties today. I suspected that it is related to their domain name service (DNS) but they're being very vague with the problem. Coincidentally, today is the start of daylight savings in the US. It could be that their DNS servers were confused about the time change.

DNS is a major component of the internet. When you type in "www.runningahead.com" into your browser, your browser would ask for the underlying IP address from the DNS. Each computer on the internet has a unique IP address, which is equivalent to a phone number.

When you wanted to call Bob, you don't pick up the phone and punch in "Bob". Instead, you dial Bob's number. If you don't know Bob's number, you can look it up in the phone book. A DNS is an electronic phone book of sorts. If you can't find the phone book, you can't call Bob. It doesn't mean that Bob is not waiting for your call. You just can't call him. Similarly, if you know RunningAHEAD.com's IP address, you still can access it but I doubt most people don't know it.

Since this is a GoDaddy problem, many websites were unreachable today. It looks like things are resuming normal. Let's see if they would give a more detailed explanation of what happened.

eric Smile