Free Republic DNS entry seems to be gone

N/A | 04/04/2016 | N/A

[Pox]

I was surfing FR this afternoon and suddenly was unable to access any page on FR and the error stated the server could not be found.

I located the IP address, 209.157.64.200, of the server and then added an entry into my PC's host file and I can now see FR again.

I still do not see a DNS entry for FR, and that is interesting.

[ssschev]

I up your number plus 6 zeros to 0+0000000 and up your anti by $20.00 :)
I am having DNS issues too.

[NoCmpromiz]

For what it’s worth..

I see comments about Frontier taking on previous Verizon customers and having issues. I also see reports of a massive Comcast outage, especially around the San Francisco area.

I have Frontier DSL service but I have been using Open DNS as a DNS server since at least 2010. When I first got OpenDNS they had FreeRepublic blocked as a hate site. I complained and FR was unblocked. On those lines, could Frontier be doing the same to their former Verizon customers?

Now for another observation. As I said, I am now using OpenDNS. When I try to access FR through my gateway machine (with lookup going to OpenDNS) I get ‘not found’. From any of the machines on my in house network, I can access FR. This seems to be because my in-house gateway software has the lookup cached and thus anything coming from the network can go through. Any lookup originated on the gateway machine on the other hand calls OpenDNS, and they insist you are non-existant. OpenDNS is not showing any outages on their network other than in South Africa.

I note another FReeper said he uses OpenDNS and implied he was having no issues, so it could be a backbone issue because he’s in FL and I’m in NY so the requests would follow a different route.

[dmzTahoe]

Jim,

Cannot reach Freerepublic through my T-mobil cel... keeps coming up as non-existent.

you may want to look into it. thanks

[Stentor]

Not a problem on T-Mobile in Philly.

[amihow]

I could not reach it this afternoon from cell phone either.

[snarkpup]

209.157.64.200 www.freerepublic.com

I added the prescribed line to the hosts file, but then after a few minutes, Free Republic disappeared again, for the third time in the last couple of hours. I restarted the browser and immediately everything now works again. Is this a coincidence or is this the expected behavior (i.e., browser restart required)?

[rapture-me]

I had the same problem. Called Centurylink and even they couldn’t ping it. Said that it was a problem on Freerepublic’s end. I switched to OPENDNS and everything works great again.

[Company Man]

Still having sporadic results more than three hours later...

[spokeshave]

[InfraRed]

I have Comcast/XFinity for a provider, and have been using their DNS servers for years. Five or six weeks ago, I began experiencing issues. At that time, my browsers were randomly getting "404 host not found" messages. If I were to reload the page or click the same link again, the page would load properly. The problem became tiresome, so I switched to using Level3 DNS servers and the problem went away.

Today, I began experiencing issues again, but this time I was not getting error messages. Instead, I was taken to a Level3 search engine. If I attempted to click http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/articles:latest/ I was instead taken to http://searchguide.level3.com/search/?q=http%3A//www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index%3Ftab%3Darticles&r=&t=0

I searched the net for a cause, and found a page describing malware which can cause this: http://www.malwarekillers.com/how-to-remove-searchguide-level3-com-browser-hijacker/

Not believing I was infected with malware, my first reaction was to switch my DNS configs back to XFinity/Comcast from Level3. Using the XFinity DNS servers in place of Level3 seemed to solve the problem.

[InfraRed]

Oh, one more thing... I already had freerepublic.com defined in my host file with 209.157.64.200 for an address. There is definitely something very strange going on.

[NoCmpromiz]

Another item..

Checking FR on three of the ‘Is It Up’ sites gets:

http://is-it-down.com says FR is up

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com says FR is up

http://www.isitdownrightnow.com says FR is down

Cycling back through those three produced different results. Whatever is going on is sporadic..

[driftdiver]

Home version right now

[NoCmpromiz]

OK, same here. Got to be a location (tracert) issue..

[IncPen]

Visit https://www.opendns.com

Change your DNS Settings to
208.67.222.222
and
208.67.220.220

On a Mac (I’m not a PC guy)
- Pull down the Apple icon, upper right
- Choose System Preferences
- Choose Network
- Choose Advanced
- Choose DNS tab
- Below the DNS Servers window, click the plus sign
- Enter 208.67.222.222
- press return
- Enter 208.67.220.220
- Click ok
- Click Apply

FR should be working

[WVKayaker]

Since I am in the Philippines, I use a US-based iP (Hotspot Shield) service so I can watch Netflix, etc. Frequently, I have to sign out of that and back in to a different site (they have hundreds (or more). I have this happen quit a bit, and can only get back in from a different server site. But, without the US-based Host iP, using only my Philippine host, I never have had a problem!

Just reporting from this side of the world! 7107 Islands at low tide!

[Laserman]

I had the same problem via centurylink. Thanks for the solution. Hope Jim is able to track this down!!

[NoCmpromiz]

However, check #82. Open DNS does not solve the issue. Driftdiver is using OpenDNS and he has no problem. I use OpenDNS and have the problem.

Out of curiosity, where in this country are you located?

[datricker]

yes I noticed this too. Probably around 4:30 PST

[The Continental Op]

Still down on the west coast. When trying to get on site, user is routed to “FrontierSearch” which lists links to FR (legit links), none of which work, and just lead back to FrontierSearch again. I could get on in proxy mode using Startpage, but couldn’t sign on. Tried from another location using a Time Warner Cable system, and user is routed to Time Warner page of links to FR, and those work. Still no direct access to FR either on Verizon or Time Warner. I’m no techie, but wondering if the site got hacked or...?
Hope the problem is ironed out soon. This is an issue with FR only, as far as I can tell.