Can't access amazon.co.uk (since Friday) and don't know why!

Can anyone suggest why, since approx. the morning of Friday Feb 5th I have been unable to access any Amazon web pages?

I'm with Vispa, and as far as I can tell my DNS settings are all correct. I can get to anywhere else, I just can't get into Amazon. Whisky. Tango. etc.

The same problem manifests the same way on my wife's iPad, which is using the same router, but doesn't manifest on our smartphones if we use the Vodafone connection.

Given that the router settings haven't been changed for months (at least not by us!), and given that they appear to be correct anyway, is it possible this has something to do with the DNS at Vispa?

This may have saved me some money over the weekend, but it's bugging the heck out of me.

I'm reasonably PC literate, but only have a very basic knowledge of networking/ADSL.

Any suggestions as to what I can/should try are welcome!

Failing any luck today I'll have to try to get though to Vispa on the blower tomorrow from work; not an attractive prospect...

Edited by deleted (Sun 08-Feb-15 12:24:20)

Can you access by IP address: http://178.236.6.251 ?

Edited by jelv (Sun 08-Feb-15 15:18:55)

Hmmm. Thanks for that!

It seems to work initially if I load the IP directly - so at least I can tell that no-one has been helping themselves to multiple copies of ghastly Radiohead CDs while I've been locked out, or buying anything else that would shame me eternally.

I get through as normal, but moving around anywhere within Amazon - my wish list for example - and it's no-go as before. So does that mean that there's an odd Amazon shaped hole in Vispa's DNS tables for some bizarre reason?

Why on earth would that happen?

Edited by deleted (Sun 08-Feb-15 18:23:45)

Try flushing your local DNS cache:

http://www.wikihow.com/Flush-DNS

You could change the DNS servers used by computer and/or router.

http://www.howtogeek.com/167239/7-reasons-to-use-a-t...

http://www.howtogeek.com/164981/how-to-switch-to-ope...

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/38869/how-to-setup-yo...

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/browsers/f/change-dns-...

Doing a ping of www.amazon.co.uk would give back the IP address the DNS is serving to ensure that it isn't a bad DNS entry.

Have you tried turning your router off and on again?

Thankyou to all who suggested avenues of exploration or advice. I had tried all of the obvious - turned things off and on again, flushed cache etc. - but to no avail.

A call to Vispa's support desk first thing this morning revealed that they were already aware of the issue, which they described as "looking a lot like a DNS issue, but we don't think it actually IS a DNS issue - we think it's a routing thing of some kind...".

Whatever, they fixed it, and all is now back to normal (touches wood, strokes rabbit's foot etc.).

Which just goes to show that if something looks like a DNS issue, and behaves like a DNS issue, it may still not respond to any DNS-related work-arounds, because it still may NOT be a DNS issue.

Edited by deleted (Mon 09-Feb-15 19:36:05)

Amazon does have a slightly uncommon way of doing things. It's all very well to ask if a particular IP address is reachable but www.amazon.co.uk's IP address can (and frequently does) change every sixty seconds as that's the TTL (time to live) value for the hostname's IP address to be valid.

At the moment I'm getting;

www.amazon.co.uk.	60	IN	A	54.239.36.155

www.amazon.co.uk.	60	IN	A	178.236.6.251

www.amazon.co.uk.	60	IN	A	176.32.108.186

when I do queries greater than sixty seconds apart. Consecutive queries often give different results.

Under OS X, there is a process called mDNSResponder which locally caches DNS lookups made by applications. Windows has a similar system. I suspect these cache the IP addresses for much longer than the specified 60 seconds.

On occasion it means that when I try to open www.amazon.co.uk, the website cannot be reached by my browser as the stored IP address relates to an Amazon server that's gone offline. From a command line DNS query I get a valid IP address instantly. Closing and restarting the browser doesn't restore web access and the mDNSResponder process needs to be restarted to flush its cache before the website works again.

So, there are oddities about Amazon.

I've just tried the link and find it is blocked by Kaspersky AV

"The requested URL cannot be provided

URL:

http://178.236.6.251/

Blocked by Web Anti-Virus

Reason: phishing URL "


Make of that what you will.