O2 DNS issue?

[mehmeh]

Hey all.
Had an O2 connection for a couple of months now.. No problems whatsoever untill the past week.. Several times now the internet has died on me.. I can still connect to the O2 box (reports the connection as active) and my Linksys WRT54 (have them bridged, O2 box acting as a modem, 54G doing all the routing etc).
All I get in firefox or IE is "connecting to www.whatever.com", no timeout messages or anything.. Happened again just now and a restart of the O2 box seemed to sort it, but in the past has come back on its own.

I think this is the DNS issue I've heard mentioned many times in the past, but before I start messing around with opendns and probably screw it up worse than it is.. Wanna make sure I'm on the right track here?

Thanks in advance.

[kalniel]

If restarting the box always fixes it then I don't think it's a DNS issue.

O2 is prone to DNS issues, but when they happen restarting the box doesn't usually do anything to fix it, because the DNS server is at O2's end, not yours.

I still recommend going to openDNS - it is much better than O2's DNS servers, and the process is harmless (and very easily reversible - a reset to factory settings will do it too).

Do you have to use the linksys + O2 box?

[moogle]

Could be the DNS issues. If you find "whatever.com" doesn't work do a lookup of it's IP and then try connecting directly to it. While O2/Be are good their DNS servers aren't the best so it's always good to use a different one.

[mehmeh]

Sup Moogle.

Hmmm.. Just had the problem again. Reset the O2 box and everythings back to normal. Looking less like DNS?? and actually reminding me of the grief I had with an old Safecom pile of crap crashing everytime I loaded a few torrents up. Had some torrents going this time and the trackers were reporting offline (and utorrent showing a yellow triangle) but still going at a few kb up and down. MSN dead. Firefox dead. AVG update dead. Deffo not lossing the connection completely and not seeing any slowdown or issues on the network either (can http and telnet into the routers no problem)

Will give openDNS a try anywho. Will save the servers to a text doc and next time this happens, whack them in and see if it all comes back to life.

RE: The bridged setup, don't have to use it nope. But the Linksys walks all over the O2 box. O2 box is acting purely as a modem, with the Linksys doing all the routing etc. Has been working flawlessly for over 2months now. Only the last 24hours I've needed to pay any attention to it all.

[kalniel]

Which suggests to me one of the bits of hardware is on it's way out. Hopefully not, but these things have never lasted me very long and miscellaneous disconnects are the sort of symptoms I usually see.

Try it with just the O2 box to see if it's any better, but I'd guess it's the modem that's having problems rather than the router.

[gurpz1]

I've been with O2 now for just under 3 months and am consistently having this problem and I think it may be a UPnP problem. My belief for this is simple. If i run a program like MSN, Steam, Azureaus etc I automatically lose internet connection. However disabling UPnP and manually configuring the router (which the O2 BOX II makes difficult) I haven't had drop outs since.

Although in the evenings when the neighbours boot up their ADSL2+ the modem does reboot itself :S this i think is a "Green Box" problem or me just owning the line

[mehmeh]

Been running for a few days now with openDNS and still had a drop out yesterday. That only leaves one culprit left, the O2 box. Restart seems to fix it everytime, so would be thinking along the same lines as you gurpz1. Difference here tho is the O2 box is acting as just a modem, passing a single IP along to the Linksys, which is doing all the routing (uPNP, Manual port forwards, DHCP for the network, the works).

Phoneline -- O2 box --(bridged)-- Linksys WRT54G ---- Computers

Been here before with torrents crashing a router and bringing all traffic to a near standstill. But when it happened on an old safecom I had no http access to it to restart and had to pull the plug (usually several times a day!). Nothing has changed in the past couple of weeks, so can't see why the O2 box would suddenly start this.

Could it be something as silly as the O2 box overheating?

Think I'll backup the config files (took me a day to set it all up ) and do a plug pull and factory reset on the lot.

gurpz1: I would be ringing O2 and getting them to investigate that one, mate. Customer service is supposed to be top notch, so good oppotunity to try it out.

[Lee H]

Could it be something as silly as the O2 box overheating?

It could be you know.

The router (speedtouch 780WL IIRC) I had when I was with bethere would crash after a day or two due to the heat generated and I found that if I put the router "upside down" it would run for days without any issues as the heat escaped from the "slots" on the bottom easier when it was inverted

(A polite notice to router designers out there - HEAT RISES!)

[mehmeh]

Not such a silly idea then. Thanks Lee.

I shifted stuff around a bit the weekend to hopefully improve ventalation , double checked all my connections and factory defaulted everything. Took bloody ages, but so far so good, 48hrs uptime now with no issues. Would like to get to the bottom of this still, but if thats an end to it now, thats cool also.

[Rabs]

You could mount your BE/O2 box on 'stilts' to alleviate heat issues or mount it on its side with bluetack or something. Purchasing a Sky DG834GT from ye olde fleabay and reflashing it with DGTeam firmware is another fairly cheap option.

As for DNS issues, use OpenDNS - a workaround rather than a fix but at least you dont have to deal with BE/O2's flaky DNS servers.

[tickedon]

It could be you know.

The router (speedtouch 780WL IIRC) I had when I was with bethere would crash after a day or two due to the heat generated and I found that if I put the router "upside down" it would run for days without any issues as the heat escaped from the "slots" on the bottom easier when it was inverted

(A polite notice to router designers out there - HEAT RISES!)

I had to do exactly the same thing with my BeBox last summer. Seems the Thomson people missed that basic bit of physics

[CaptainCrash]

It could be you know.

The router (speedtouch 780WL IIRC) I had when I was with bethere would crash after a day or two due to the heat generated and I found that if I put the router "upside down" it would run for days without any issues as the heat escaped from the "slots" on the bottom easier when it was inverted

(A polite notice to router designers out there - HEAT RISES!)

Same here. Not only that, the heat from beneath the Speedtouch 780 cracked and discoloured the laminate on my desk.

I really, really, really hate egregious bad design...

[mehmeh]

Didnt see I had more replies. Thanks guys.

Update: Had no problems for a good few days now and the weather is warning up nicely too. Fiddling the boxes around a bit and checked all the connections like I said and monitoring the situation. Going on whats been said, gonna keep an eye on the O2 box and next time it does play up, first thing will be a hand on to see if its cooking itself.

Cheers all.