DNS problems on AT&T's end. [ Edited ]

[upshawdc]

I think AT&T is having a DNS problem.  I am located in Monroe, Louisiana, if that helps any.   

Here is where my problem starts:  Steam, an extremely popular video game service, is currently having a huge sale. 

I am unable to properly load Steam's web page through my browser or their client software.

store.steampowered.com will not load.  Neither will Steam's community or news sites.  ALL OTHER WEB SITES WORK FINE.  I called 5 friends living in my hometown of Monroe, LA, and they all said that Steam and their software client and web site were working fine for them.  None of my friends are using AT&T DSL.  I can also access the web site on my mobile phone. 

I have tried a variety of fixes for this problem, and have been forced to conclude that the problem is on my ISP's end.  Like I said, all other web sites and services work fine for me.  And store.steampowered.com is working fine for all my friends with other service providers.

To be clear, this problem has happened with Steam and other ISP's before as well.  See here for an example:  http://community.bt.com/t5/BB-Speed-Connection-Issues/BT-vs-Steam/td-p/292193  --There, the ISP guy actually comes into the thread and admits that it was a problem on their end.

And, I don't know if this is related or not, but Xbox Live has been taking forever to log into for the past few days. 

[upshawdc]

After doing more research, I noticed that the HTML files from store.steampowered.com DO load.  However, the images and CSS sheets do not load.  The screen looks mostly like in the Steam client, lke nothing loaded, and through a web browser, the pages will get a title, but none of the images, text, etc will show up in the web browser.  The web page just continues to load and never finishes (nothing ever shows up) until it finally times out.

So, after viewing this:  http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1194981  I think I know the problem.

The site store.steampowered.com only loads the HTML.  The graphics and CSS are pulled from two more servers.  These additional servers are:    cdn.steampowered.com and cdn.store.steampowered.com 

In the Steam forums mentioned above, a user pinged one of these servers, and apparently, it went through servers as far and wide as Virginia and Hong Kong.  

In other words, the store.steampowered.com server is fine.  BUT, the servers that the images and CSS sheets (cdn.steampowered.com and cdn.store.steampowered.com) are stored on do not work at all.  AT&T, in my city, has apparently blocked those sites or has a DNS problem with them.  

Can someone fix this?  Many thanks. 

[Ludious]

I am in Ocean Springs, MS and have been experiencing the same problem all day on AT&T DSL at work and at home. The page loads fine on my cellphone. Fix this ASAP. You are literally costing me money.

[alexanderschwabs]

I am in Miami, Florida and I have been having the same exact issue!

Occassionally, when I attempt to connect to Steam etc... it would notify me that I cannot connect to their servers, and so on. But this isn't solely related to Steam, even when I surf the web some pages load while others fail to show any images, and not to mention the volatile connection speeds.

After roaming around the internet for an answer, if you can even call it 'roaming', people have reported this many be a DNS issue. I scanned for DNSchanger malwares, did the entire 'ipconfig /flushdns', restarted my modem 50 times, the whole nine yards without any progress. 

I am really fed up with AT&T. Anytime you call customer service it is the same instructions: "Disconnect your modem. Now reconnect your modem. Did it work?"

This issue started about 1 month ago and still no progress. Time to change providers?

[ATTKenneth]

Please try manually setting the DNS IPs to the following addresses:

Preferred DNS Server - 68.94.156.1

Alternate DNS Server - 68.94.157.1

If the problem continues after the change please PM ATTAlexCM.  He's one of the Community Managers and he can help get it to the right people for you.

[upshawdc]

I did change the IPv4 DNS settings to those that you gave above, and this solution worked.  However, as things appear to be working fine, I did not change the IPv6 settings, but for now, I don't think that is a big issue. 

Strangely, my original problem with Steam only lasted about 1 and 1/2 days.  I came back to this thread because the sites joystiq.com and metacritic.com were displaying the same behavior as Steam had a few days ago.  The HTML would load, but any CSS or graphics would not load.  Again, the graphics and css were loading from servers with "cdn" in the address. 

Anyway, this IPv4 DNS addresses you gave worked for me, so many, many thanks for that. 

[upshawdc]

I just noticed...now Joystiq.com and Metacritic.com are working, but The Daily Caller won't load anything besides basic HTML.  So the fix above was a partial fix.  It fixed Metacritic.com and Joystiq.com, but cdn01.dailycaller.com won't load.  A news article on The Daily Caller is currently linked on The Drudge Report.  When I follow the link, it won't load anything but the html, and images/css loading from cdn01.dailycaller.com won't load at all, so the page is mostly barren. 

Again, some addresses containing "cdn" will not resolve.  (Content Delivery Network addresses are still having some problems resolving.) 

Still, at least the DNS changes above got some of my sites working again. 

edit:  After about 30 minutes, even the Dailer Caller site started working again.  Thanks!  -- Maybe some of this is on their end, with content servers not being able to handle the load?  But, considering that the DNS settings above made an immediate difference, I'm pretty sure that part of this was on AT&T's end.  It's difficult to tell from the end-user perspective. 

[Computer-Joe ACE - Master]

It's possible the CDN servers are all over the place and load is dynamically shifted from one server to another as needed, and AT&T's DNS servers do not update fast enough to handle the redirects. Have you tried hard coding in OpenDNS or Google DNS server addresses instead of the AT&T servers Kenneth provided?

As far as IPv6, AT&T does not support IPv6 currently. They're working on a band-aid to that problem I believe to avoid having to deal with it.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
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I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
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There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
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“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell

[alexanderschwabs]

Just a follow-up: 

I didn't change anything and one morning everything was back to normal, no random disconnects, everything loads correctly, etc...

I suppose it was on AT&T's end and they resolved the issue, not sure. 

Nevertheless, thanks for all the advice.

[Computer-Joe ACE - Master]

---

alexanderschwabs wrote:

Just a follow-up: 

I didn't change anything and one morning everything was back to normal, no random disconnects, everything loads correctly, etc...

I suppose it was on AT&T's end and they resolved the issue, not sure. 

Nevertheless, thanks for all the advice.

---

Thanks for the update, be sure to stop back if you have any other problems.

__________________________________________________________
How can you be in two places at once, when your not anywhere at all?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I really want to become a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are three kinds of people, those that can count, and those that can't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them." :Bertrand Russell