Random sites not opening. What is wrong?

In most cases, when you experience some sites not opening, there could be three reasons

• The website you are trying to open might be down or may be experiencing network issues. This is something you cannot fix. Only the webmaster of the site can fix this. try to confirm from a friend if he is also not being able to open that site. If its the same case for him, you can try to informing the webmaster of the site. Usually an email to webmaster@[site name] is good enough. You can also try to find the exact person to inform from the whois page of the website. To find out the contact address, type http://whois.sc/[site name]. On the page that opens, find out the contact email of the webmaster.
• Your internet service provider(the guys who provide you your internet connection) might be experiencing difficulties or it might be the case of improper or slow connectivity. In such cases its best to ask or phone your ISP.
• Your ISP's DNS server might be having issues. This is the most common case why some sites might open, while others might not. DNS is basically a nameserver that your computer calls when you type in a URL to a website. Any website name is basically an alias for a IP address where it is hosted. A DNS server returns the IP of the alias. Thus if the DNS server is down, you might not be getting the IP address of the website and thus you will be unable to access it.

If your problem is the last one, its easy to solve it. You can try to specify an alternate DNS server. In our case we will specify OPENDNS server which is a private company that operates world wide and provides free DNS nameservers. Using opendns can make your connection faster and reliable as OpenDNS's server are simply closer to where you are at least if you are in Europe or US and thus take less hops to reach and resolve domain.

Steps to manually set the DNS setting on your computer

In order to change the DNS to opendns you have to change your primary and secondary ip address of your internet setting.

On Windows XP Goto Control Panel > Network Connection > Right click on the interface > Select TCP IP > Click on Properties > Use Manually Enter IP > just use the IP your currently using use "ipconfig /all" to check, then enter the DNS server IP on the DNS primary and DNS secondary field. Type the following IP Address into the DNS Primary and DNS Secondary field 208.67.222.222 | 208.67.220.220.

On Windows Vista Goto Control Panel > Network Connection > Right click on the interface > then click on manage network > Select TCP IP > Click on Properties > Use Manually Enter IP > just use the IP your currently using use "ipconfig /all" to check, then enter the DNS server IP on the DNS primary and DNS secondary field. Type the following IP Address into the DNS Primary and DNS Secondary field 208.67.222.222 | 208.67.220.220.

On Linux issue the following command

echo "nameserver 208.67.222.222" > /etc/resolv.conf
echo "nameserver 208.67.220.220" >> /etc/resolv.conf

After changing the DNS setting and DNS server IP try to open the sites that were earlier not opening. If they still don't open, the cause of error could be any of the first two as mentioned above.