I work for a company which runs a number of websites, and we recently made some DNS changes to our sites which should not have caused a problem for any of our customers. Indeed, most customers were fine, but a few customers suddenly couldn't get to our sites. We quickly found that all the customers with problems were using Orange broadband (regular broadband and also mobile broadband), and we've now had dozens of Orange customers with the same problem - it seems to be affecting everyone on Orange but nobody else.
After some investigation it became apparent that Orange's DNS cache servers, which are assigned to all Orange customers, had got the wrong DNS information and were failing to give customers access to our sites. I confirmed this by getting a couple of customers to do nslookup commands which showed the problem was with Orange's DNS cache servers (cache0.orange.net and cache1.orange.ne), and I double-checked this by getting a couple of customers to bypass the Orange DNS cache servers with the Google Public DNS service - after they did this the problems went away completely.
At this point I filled in the contact form on Orange's website to let their technical support know about the problem. I got an email back saying they weren't going to investigate because we weren't a customer. So, I set up an Orange mobile broadband account and got a dongle - as expected, I wasn't able to get to our websites via the Orange connection even though I could see sites such as Google etc. So, now that I was a customer, I phoned up their technical support for mobile broadband, only to be told - after a long discussion - that there was nothing they could do and that I'd have to go back to the Orange website and fill in the contact form on there. So I filled in this form again and explained all the problems in detail. This was at 6pm last night and I've had no response at all.
Additionally, there's a person from some frontline customer support department who got in touch with us after one of our customers with Orange complained to him that they couldn't get to our sites. He seemed quite concerned for a while and he tried to pass the problem over to their tech team, but although I keep asking him for updates he's gone quiet now and, although I supplied him with all the technical details necessary to show him that the problem was with Orange's DNS cache servers, still nothing has been done and I've been given no indication of whether anyone technical at Orange has even started to look at the problem.
This problem has now been going on for over a week. I've been telling Orange about the problem using every method available to me, and many of our customers who are on Orange have also been contacting Orange to tell them about the problem and ask when it's going to be resolved. There has been absolutely no response from Orange and nothing done at all in all this time. It's bad enough that Orange's DNS cache servers are obviously broken and severely affecting all our customers, but to fail to fix the problem or to even provide any sort of helpful response regarding the problem is, in my view, absolutely appalling.
If any Orange customers reading this are curious about the problem and have a spare moment, please try to visit
http://www.uk.castingcallpro.com/ and see whether you can get to the site. (We have many other sites too, but this is one of our main sites.) I'd be really interested to see whether _anyone_ on Orange can get to it. Bear in mind that this site is visible to all Internet users not on Orange!
I'd also be interested to know if anyone on Orange has had similar problems with failing to get to specific sites that were available from other Internet Service Providers. Additionally, does anyone know of any person in department in Orange that might be able to help, and if so how might I contact them?
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