I have a customer that recently created a hosting account with us. He has a reallly poor ISP, that has not updated their DNS records for ages. He still can not ping his site one our servers after almost a week.

I know there is a file on his computer he can edit, that will bypass the lookup and point to my servers. Anyone know how to do this?

Have you tried telling your customer to access his web site by the IP address. This may not work if his site is name-based.

The best solution is probably tell your client to e-mail his/her ISP and tell them to flush their DNS cache. It really isn't that much work.

I agree, but the ISP is some small Canadian company that won't answer.

Isn't there a way I can tell my PC that www.whatever.com is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx ???

Under linux:

Edit /etc/hosts, done

UNder windows:
????

C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on NT, and something like that on windows 98 (mabey replace winnt with windows

Windows 98 - C:\windows\hosts (there should be a hosts.sam file giving instructions).

why not just have your customer point his DNS settings to your DNS server? if his ISP hasn't updated their DNS records in a long time, then who knows what other servers he may not be able to get to. (i thought the DNS servers updated every night :confused: )

anyway, under linux, edit the /etc/resolv.conf file.
under windows, right click network neighborhood->properties. find the TCP/IP settings and double click. on the DNS tab, have him enter your DNS IP's instead of his ISP's ones.

i don't see why there would be any problems with doing this.

and if your server goes down for a reboot or freezes he wont be able to access any websites on the internet...

Originally posted by MaB
and if your server goes down for a reboot or freezes he wont be able to access any websites on the internet...

if you have a reliable server, then you shouldn't worry. you'll have the same problem from the ISP as well. my ISP's DNS servers tend to go down from time to time (yes, both of them). however, you're not limited to just having 2 DNS entries. you can have your DNS server as the primary one, and the ISP's server as the secondary and 3rd (can't for the life of me remember what the word is for 3rd :o ).

Originally posted by MaB
and if your server goes down for a reboot or freezes he wont be able to access any websites on the internet...

Actually, you can, it just takes a tiny bit of work. First, you can get to anything by knowing it's IP address. Second, get to your favorite website (via IP) that lets you tracert stuff through their page. Enter in whatever page you want to go to and look at the IP it tells you it resolves to.

Though this doesnt work on sites that don't have their own IP. It also helps to have google's IP memorized as well http://216.239.35.100/

But your best bet would be to know of another set of DNSes.

And third is tertiary. :)

I assumed if the guy didnt know how to set the dns, he wouldnt know how to look up IPs and use them. Plus, (like you said) if there is more than 1 site on that ip it wont correctly. 3rdly, if he had more nameservers than just his hosts, why would he put his hosts in there at all?

Actually I was just curious what file in Windows I can edit and tell it that www.whatever.com is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

That is all... I see now...

Having a customer put my dns information in his TCP/IP settings would be a huge problem..