Our network provider's DNS servers, which provide a "directory" service to find our hosted websites, were attacked by a DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attack early this morning.  The servers were inaccessible due to the attack for several hours and came back online very early this morning.  We still are not sure of the time frame, but it appears it was around 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. give or take a few minutes.

All sites are 100% functional and did not go down, this was a DNS problem at our provider network, caused by an attack.

Because of this, some ISPs own DNS servers, which "cache" or save a record of the IP addresses of domains referenced, removed the IP addresses of your domains when they could not get an update from our network DNS servers.  Then when you try to connect to your site/email/etc. your providers DNS gives a "not found" response, not bothering to check again.  So the net result is you can't access your site/email because your providers DNS doesn't give you the address to it, even though the site/email are online and available.  Most providers DNS servers have since refreshed and now are once again pointing to your websites, etc. but we do not control when they do this.

I was paged around 2 a.m. and could not immediately connect to our sites using DNS.  I quickly determined that the server was operational and it was problem with our network providers DNS servers.  I did confirm that at 6:00 a.m. I was able to reference all sites I tried, so the DNS servers I was using from OpenDNS had been updated.  We've had several clients contact us this morning saying they could not reach their websites - their ISPs have not updated their DNS servers that they're using (automatically).

Bear in mind that you do *not* have to use your ISP's DNS servers - many of them, such as home DSL or cable customers, are not maintained well and are not a priority to the provider when there is a problem, so in general it is not a good idea to use them.  You use them when your computer/router is set to pick up an automatic IP address and automatic DNS servers, but you can change this if you wish.

208.67.222.222

208.67.220.220

I recommend using OpenDNS, which is not only more robust, but also will protect you from phishing scams, and has optional content filtering you can turn on.  Go to OpenDNS.com for more information or contact us for assistance.

Any further relevant information will be passed on.

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