CenturyLink DSL problems?

[NotDeadYet]

Bump.
New modem did not solve the problem. Today I finally got passed on to advanced tech support. After about an hour and a half, during which time the tech tried a whole bunch of things, I am waiting for a call back. Tech was really nice or I would have gone screaming out the back door.
Anyone else having problems with just some web sites?

 

[NotDeadYet]

Got the promised call back. The problem is resolved, at least for now, but the exact cause is still not quite pinned down. I have to say, the tech was great.

 

[Childerelda]

NotDeadYet, I had similar problems yesterday, but i don't think it was Centurylink.

Whenever you connect to a web site, your request actually gets routed through a number of servers that work behind the scenes to process all requests on the Internet (sort of like a road from your house to the place you want to go). Not all websites are found on the same route, meaning if one of these servers is down, you might still be able to get to another site. Using something called a traceroute, you can see the path your request has to make, and if there is any outage along the line (extending the analogy of a road, a traffic jam or closed road). Doing this traceroute yesterday for the sites I couldn't access, I could see that my connection was getting out to the Internet, but would stop and hang at the same point every time.

I called tech support at Centurylink but the standard techs really didn't know how to deal with the information, and had no ability to look into the problem (she said I should contact the different websites I couldn't get to and talk to them, but we're talking about at least half the Internet that I could not access!). It suddenly got resolved in the early afternoon, but I've as yet been able to find any information about an outage in the broader Internet that would have caused this problem. It might have been Centurylink, but it might have been another company that provides these routing servers.

In general, though, if you can connect to some sites, it's generally not a problem with your equipment or line (although may be a problem with your provider generally). There's a neat site called Down for Everyone or Just Me (http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/), that can help figure these problems out.

Hope this helps!

 

[NotDeadYet]

Childerelda, thanks for posting, very interesting. I didn't go into much detail in my post because I didn't know if anyone would be particularly interested, so here is a bit more info for you. First, you are correct, the standard techs don't know enough. I think the magic words for getting passed up to advanced tech might be "I am so frustrated that I am about to give up and switch to cable internet," which I did say, since I have had this same problem, or one very like it, before, and having run through all the simple stuff with the regular techs several times in the past I was quite sure it was not just me. We have three computers here - two different Windows (7 and xp) and had the problem on all three and also on all three browsers - Chrome, IE, and Firefox. Advanced tech suspects a DNS issue, and at the end of the day we left one computer with it's DNS server changed to google, and the other two are set to Century Link's DNS servers. If it happens again, which I suspect it will, that might narrow down the issue. It was an hour and a half with the advanced tech on the first call, and he did everything he could and went off to consult with advanced advanced tech, I guess, and called me back after a couple of hours. Very coincidental that that was early afternoon, and in between the phone calls it suddenly resolved. On the second call he did a few more things, and that is when we discovered that it was fixed, but apparently not by anything we did.
If you have the problem again, see if you can get beyond the basic techs. The guy I worked with was pretty knowledgeable, as well as very professional. And he calmed me down, lol, normally I can't do two hours of techie stuff on the phone like that - my brain starts feeling like it's going to explode.