If you have CenturyLink and can't load DU

[Flying Squirrel]

Please rec this thread to the moon, to help CenturyLink DU'ers who have not been able to read DU for A WEEK NOW!



Try the following links:

http://betterment.democraticunderground.com
http://election.democraticunderground.com
http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com
http://sync.democraticunderground.com
http://upload.democraticunderground.com

(no www before them)

If one works, don't assume it will always work - you may have to jump around - I certainly have had to do so.

Do the Koch brothers own CenturyLink? Enquiring minds want to know!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Many thanks to those who found the cure.

I've spent the last days swearing and fooling around trying to find a solution and stumbled across the 3rd link above. It works. Finally.

[earthside]

2. Thanks.

The 'sync' one works for me most of the time.

Is this going to get fixed at some point?

[2naSalit]

3. YUP Tonight...

DU will b down from 11pm (Eastern) to 2am.

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/10134089

[Warpy]

4. It's sucked for a week but it's better today

I have no clue what was going on, it was You Tube two weeks ago but only on Firefox. It worked fine on Chrome.

Thanks for letting me know who was causing the problem. I knew it was upstream because my backup XP box had the same damned problem.

[2naSalit]

5. Bookmarking

in case the "sync" one stops working for me and in case the 2 hrs "FIX" the admins are doing tonight doesn't work... but I bet it will.

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/10134089

[littlewolf]

6. thank you the only way I can get on is at work.

will try those ...

[kairos12]

7. Thanks for the links.

[pa28]

8. Same here. DU has been intermittent at best for the past week.

What's up?

[TransitJohn]

9. Cool.

I was about to start some shit.

[madokie]

10. thanks

My isp is fairpoint and if I use betterment I have much faster load times, thanks
I made new bookmarks using betterment and will see how that goes, so far much faster loading pages.

[frogmarch]

11. I'm on with the betterment link!

The only other link I've tried is the metamorphosis one, and it didn't work.

I appreciate having all these links as backups. Gracias!

[h2ebits]

12. Thanks for this info its been difficult and/or impossible for me to get on DU

[Ohio Joe]

13. It's very unstable... Mostly bad

This is one of the rare times I've been able to get here... And it's wicked slow now. I'll try those links, thanks!

[chillfactor]

14. thank you for the links..

the metaorohosis link works very good for me.....

[Hayabusa]

15. Betterment's Working For Me.

I wonder what in the hell is causing the issues with DU and CenturyLink?

[JoeyT]

16. It's not just CenturyLink.

Wild Blue has been doing it too.

[strategery blunder]

17. Thanks for the link

I have no idea what happened between DU/CenturyLink but hopefully someone who does know can fill me in.

It took multiple attempts of about 10 minutes each to open this thread (thankfully it made the front page--otherwise there's no way I would have ever seen it with the load times); I'm posting from the betterment link now. I've had the same issues as others have reported here.

The irony is that I use CenturyLink as a means of avoiding the Great Satan of ISPs and Consumerist's reigning Worst Company in America--Comcrap. But after moving a couple years ago and finding out the best internet access CenturyLink could sell me went from 14 down to 3 Mbps, and now this (which I had cynically assumed was related to the uncertain status of Net Neutrality in some way), now I'm forced to come groveling to that Great Satan of ISPs for internet access that borders upon reasonable. At least Comcrap is obligated by the NBC merger settlement to follow the old Net Neutrality rules for another four years.

In the meantime, it seems I have a very long letter, er, I mean "public comment," to write to the FCC telling it to get its act together wrt ISP regulation/competition (or lack thereof) in that marketplace.

[Nevernose]

18. This is driving me nuts

But I'm on with the election link

[russspeakeasy]

19. Many Thanks.

[gvstn]

20. I realize this should be fixed tonight.

I'm just curious if using the numeric address for DU makes any difference. 216.158.28.195 would be the address to put in your address bar and then hit go. It just takes you to DU without a DNS lookup.

It sounds like the problem is deeper than that and the actual page begins to load but stalls. Still I'm curious if it makes any difference.

[dixiegrrrrl]

27. How does one find the numeric addresses for web sites???

I just used the numeric and DU loaded almost instantly.

Now I wonder if I can use it for several other slow webpages.

[gvstn]

31. I don't do it enough to really know the best source.

It may not be related at all to the problem but I noticed DU loaded immediately for me as well when I used those numbers. I don't have CenturyLink but have had to hit my DU bookmark a few times to get a proper connection the last few months (which is fairly normal for DU).

I googled something like DU numeric address and got this post which had those numbers: http://sync.democraticunderground.com/?com=journals&uid=183537&year=2013&month=7

Two sites that should be able to get site IPs are:

http://mxtoolbox.com/DNSLookup.aspx
http://cachecheck.opendns.com/

One thing that is odd is that while I was looking for lookup sites those IP numbers changed over a period of 10 minutes. Using the cachecheck site I originally got IPs ending in .195, .197 and .199 for DU. 10 minutes later all three of those disappeared and I am now getting .196 and .198 only. Each of the 5 sets of numbers still work to load DU if put in the address bar so I may be steering you to the wrong type of site. I thought there would be a definitive IP address for a given site like .195 for DU but I can't seem to find that information on sites such as Alexa. Maybe someone who understands DNS can give some better information?

[jeff47]

36. Any busy enough site is going to have multiple IPs

One thing that is odd is that while I was looking for lookup sites those IP numbers changed over a period of 10 minutes. Using the cachecheck site I originally got IPs ending in .195, .197 and .199 for DU. 10 minutes later all three of those disappeared and I am now getting .196 and .198 only. Each of the 5 sets of numbers still work to load DU if put in the address bar so I may be steering you to the wrong type of site. I thought there would be a definitive IP address for a given site like .195 for DU but I can't seem to find that information on sites such as Alexa. Maybe someone who understands DNS can give some better information?>

Basically, the site got too busy for a single server to handle it. So there's more than one server. Each server has its own IP address, and the DNS server is supposed to rotate which IP you get to help balance the load.

A whole lot of places you go to do this - google.com comes back as 11 different servers at the moment.

[gvstn]

39. Thanks for an easy to understand explanation!

[jeff47]

34. Depends how techie you want to get.

(The system for converting names to numbers is "Domain Name Service", or DNS)

Open a command prompt or terminal window, and you can use "nslookup (website)". For example, "nslookup www.democraticunderground.com"

There's web sites that make a front-end to that process, such as http://mxtoolbox.com/DNSLookup.aspx However, that leads to a chicken-and-egg problem of getting to those sites when you're haivng trouble with the DNS lookup.

If you frequently have DNS problems, you could try switching from your ISP's DNS servers to OpenDNS. You don't need to buy their add-on services, you can just configure your computer to use their DNS servers. Google also offers free and open DNS servers.

[jtuck004]

37. Open a terminal window

At the command line type

ping democraticunderground.com

or whatever site you are interested in.

The returns may tell you. Then while holding down the control key, press c. That will stop the ping, or just close the window, and use the IP address. I got 216.158.28.196 btw.

There are other ways.

[gvstn]

40. That seems easy enough to remember. Thanks!

[emsimon33]

21. K&R

[Kablooie]

22. Does anyone have contacts with Anonymous?

Sounds like something they may be able to help with.

Once again the right acts like the communists they claim to hate.
Censoring the internet for political reasons.

Also there are free VPNs that should get around any censorship.
It's a bit of a chore to get them set up but they work once you do.

http://www.vpngate.net/en/

[pinboy3niner]

23. Try your www link--there are reports that all is back to normal now

MY DU IS BACK! HALLELUJAH!!!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024960617

[freeplessinseattle]

24. Century Link was responsible for a 5+ hr 911 partial outage here recently

Of course after about 3 days if "investigating" blamed it on a 3rd party contractor.

[Thav]

25. I'm on CenturyLink and haven't had a problem

Maybe it's geographically based? I'm in Iowa.

Although I'm dumping CL as soon as I can, which is next month. The only two choices in town were CL or MediaCom, each sucked loud. Fortunately my friend is starting up a wireless ISP and I'm his first install!

[Faux pas]

26. Wrote to EarlG

[e-mail] yesterday he explained that it is/was qwest/centurylink problem and that DU would work on this (last night). So far so good today.

Thanks for the info Flying Squirrel!

[Lifelong Protester]

28. It has been loading once in a while

we have Century link at home and at work. I can sometimes get it to work here, but only sporadically at home. I thought it was just me. I will have to write down those links for home. I'm surprised I'm even here now. The page caused my computer at home to freeze up. Again.

[CrispyQ]

29. Kick for other CL users!

[Sunlei]

30. DU was slow for me but then DU opened their new message board and the slow load went away.

CenturyLink I think uses others servers/phonelines and then on top of that charges different prices for different speeds.

They can really stuff up your internet speed with all their software and 'pricing' throttles.

[littlewolf]

32. working normal now ... thank you for the links

I have them book marked ....

[dballance]

33. I contacted CL - they were no help. It works fine now.

The jerk on their online chat support accused me of having something in my network that was the issue. He couldn't grasp the logic that if that were true I'd have issues chatting online with him, not just getting to a single, specific site and no others.

[Autumn]

35. I appreciate the DU mail with the links. I tried to send a note back to you but

couldn't get my in box to send. My DU is working fine now. That was awful.

[intheflow]

38. Oh, God, THANK YOU!!

I don't have Century Link but I often have trouble connecting to DU. Had all these bookmarked, brought my computer in for what I thought was going to be some minor work and they wiped out my whole system! Looked for the original post about them in vain; could only remember "betterment." Was very upset by the whole thing, but then you post this - just four days after I got my computer back!

I applaud you!
I bow down to you!
You rock!