Downtime

November 22, 2005 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

What a waste of a morning! As soon as I sat down at my desk, I could see there were problems – I couldn’t access any websites and I have a cronjob running on the server which warned me that it couldn’t check the IP address.

The modem had all the happy lights on – yes, “happy lights” is a valid technical term – and so did the router, but I pulled the power on both and did a hard reset. Once they’re back up, I checked again – same problems. Checked the router’s IP address – nothing! OK, so it looks like a DNS problem – time to call Rogers.

{Insert usual gripe about Rogers’ “voice activated” system – it sucks big time! Why isn’t there a parallel/alternative system where I can hit the number keys, as I used to do?}

The woman I spoke to started with the usual “is it plugged in?” type questions, but I tried to explain that I do have a clue about what I’m doing and that I suspect it’s DNS-related.

At one point she asked me to remove the power from the modem, which I told her I’d done, but she said I should unplug it from the wall and not just remove the plug from the modem. Yeah, sure, because the modem can tell the difference … and it’s just a cable that carries a current – there’s no difference!

Eventually (more by luck than chance) the router picked up a new IP address and we’re off again … or at least I can start getting it back up. A new IP address means resetting the address info at the different name servers that I use, which take time to propagate the changes.

Any way, just three hours later (ugh!) it’s all back to normal: web site‘s up; blog‘s up; gallery’s up; email’s flowing; all is good again. Phew!