help - no DNS entry

[Earl Young]

     Another occassional cause is that your copy of Netscape gets 
     "confused" (how is that for a technical term).  I have run into this 
     error before - and if it is one failure in the midst of several 
     successes, there is normally a problem in the table where the 
     addresses are being resolved - though it is not always easy for 
     consumers to tell which table at which site is failing.  If you are 
     getting slugs if them in a row, it normally means that the name 
     resolution at your ISP (or somewhere) is failing or that Netscape 
     cannot see the ISP.
     
     I have had some success in this case by closing Netscape and 
     restarting it.  Give that a shot next time you run into the problem.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: help - no DNS entry 
Author:  pem at po.cwru.edu at INTERNET
Date:    6/10/97 9:22 AM


"DNS" is an acronym for "Domain Name Service".  TCP/IP (and consequently the 
Internet) is made up of connection between a bunch of numbers (called an IP 
address; like "129.22.138.1") and DNS provides (among other things) a mapping 
of human-rememberable names to these numbers.  For instance, people send mail 
to you at a machine called email.mesd.k12.or.us, but machine actually has the 
address "198.236.66.3", and any machine sending your machine mail must 
translate the name to the address in order to find your machine on the 
network.  The same sort of thing happens in the web:  "www.cwru.edu" is 
translated to an IP address by the DNS, which the browser then uses to 
connnect to our web server.
     
The error message you are seeing is cause by the DNS server finding no 
mapping between the name you typed in the URL and an IP address out there on 
the Internet.  This can happen if you mis-type the URL, or by problems in the 
DNS.  It is difficult to tell without some examples, and I'd suggest trying 
to chat with your network specialists.  Or, send me an e-mail message with 
some examples and I can at least determine whether the DNS considers them 
valid machine names...
     
Good luck!
     
     
Peter
     
On Mon, 9 Jun 1997 16:50:16 -0700 mary_bush at email.mesd.k12.or.us (Mary Bush) 
wrote:
     
> Can anybody tell me what it means when there are repeat "no DNS" entries - 
> not just a couple of busy, unavailable URL's,  but 15 in a row?  The "no
> DNS"
> responses seem to come immediately, as if Netscape hasn't even gone 
> looking, and each successive attempt at another URL brings the same
> immediate response.  It happens at all times of day.  Could this be a 
> problem
> with our server?
> A number of people within our building and on our Network, have 
> experienced this during the last couple of weeks.
> I'm running Netscape 3.0, Windows 95.  Our LAN is on a Novell server, and 
> our web servers are Windows NT.
     
--
Peter Murray, Library Systems Manager                      pem at po.cwru.edu 
Digital Media Services                   http://www.cwru.edu/home/pem.html 
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio            W:216-368-5888