Client can't see their website (or get email) - but proxy servers can

Hi,

If anyone has any ideas on this I would be eternally grateful as it is taking up soooo much time and is getting really frustrating!

A couple of weeks before Christmas, a client asked us to host their site.

I transferred their domain from Strato to 123-Reg (Strato said I couldn’t just change the nameservers, they wouldn’t hold any domain they didn’t host!).

And I set up a hosting account on our VPS.

All’s fine here. I can see the site and check her webmail and connect via FTP. But the client can’t always see her site, or get her emails in entourage, or connect via FTP. Sometimes she can but not always.

When she can’t see the site, if she pings it, she gets the wrong IP address (I think it’s Strato’s but I’m not sure).

If she tries to connect via FTP using an IP address rather than the domain, she gets in OK.

She’s tried on different computers so it’s not a cache issue.

123-reg email and telephone support have promised me they can’t see anything wrong on the domain.

And we can’t find anything at all out of the ordinary on the server.

If anyone’s got any ideas at all I’d love to hear them!

Does anyone think it could be an ISP issue? And if so, what can I do about it?

Thanks!

lisa x

I suspect it’s the ISP. A company I worked for used an ISP that updated their records infrequently. If a website changed it’s dns records then we couldn’t reach it for weeks.

If the nameservers propagated perfectly then its definately an ISP issue. You can check out the ping and tracert reports of the domain.

Would an ISP issue account for her sometimes seeing it and sometimes not? Sometimes pinging the right IP and sometimes the wrong one? I mean, if an ISP haven’t updated their records, would they still fluctuate between the old and new DNS settings?

Thank you so much for your help by the way!
Lx

LA,

To me, this is a DNS issue and the problem is likely with the registrar. This is another in a long series of reasons NOT to host with a registrar nor register with a host. Keep your registrar and host separate and you’ll have no … well, fewer problems.

When you change the DNS at the registrar, it takes up to three days to propagate around the Internet so you client needs a bit of patience.

Regards,

DK

Many thanks David - I do use a separate registrars and hosts. So have had both independently check settings their end. And both have ended up saying it might be an ISP issue, but I just need to be sure before I can tell the client (who’s a close friend!) that there’s nothing more I can do.

It’s been about 3 weeks now so it’s not really a matter of patience with propagation anymore!

Lisa x

Lx,

Hmmm, if it’s not a registrar issue then it must be an issue with your VPS’s DNS. Check the DNS settings for your client’s domain (although I’ve never heard of WHM/cPanel not adding a domain correctly). Your VPS support team (if managed) should be able to help.

Regards,

DK

Can you check if the IP of your customer is not blocked on your side?
If mail is working and customer can see web site through proxy I suppose that could be blocked IP on the side of web hosting provider.
Just kind of guessing in here