Problem reaching MS Knowledge Base Site

Hey everyone, I am a bit stumped here, and was wondering if anybody could help me out or point me in the right direction. Heres the problem, no computer at the office can reach http://support.microsoft.com however they can reach microsoft.com
This is happening on the clients which dns is pointed to our dns server. Also i cannot reach support.microsoft.com from the DNS Server itself. Same error: Internet Explorer cannot display the page. If it was a DNS issue why would it let me go to micosoft.com but not support.microsoft.com? We are running Tred Micro virus protection. I did a full scan Search&Destroy and still happening. I reset IE 7 browser, still happening. In Firefox I do not get a error like in IE 7, i just get a white page when trying to reach support.microsoft.com. I am thinking this might be a issue on the ISP side? As I dont know what else it could be.

Thanks in advance for the help,

win2k4

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Comments

hetty

How are your DNS servers setup? Clients access the server DNS and it in turn forwards to your internet gateway IP address or your ISP address? Have you tried using OpenDNS?

he-man

Maybe the site is down??

Can you browse to the IP 64.4.52.254?

Do you actually have a microsoft.com zone in your DNS? (I know its unlikley)

win2k8

No i cannot browse by IP. Yes its setup like: Clients access the server DNS and it in turn forwards to your internet gateway IP address or your ISP address. Looking into this OpenDNS thing.

thanks,

win2k4

dynamik

If you can't pull it up by IP, it sounds like you have a network problem. That will work whether your DNS is working or not.

If you ping support.microsoft.com or do an nslookup support.microsoft.com, do you get the IP address he-man mentioned? If so, it's not a DNS problem (like I said, even if your DNS is misconfigured, you should still be able to access it via the IP).

hypnotoad

I also get 64.4.52.254 support.microsoft.akadns.net but can't ping it...maybe it doesn't respond to pings. if you traceroute it, does it make it out of your ISP's network?

win2k8

Just an update, i tried that OpenDNS, and still cant reach support.microsoft.com
What kind of network problem could it be, like firewall or router? I didnt make any changes to either though? Maybe its a network problem outside the office network, like ISP blocking it?

I did a tracert, and it seems like after the last router for the ISP, it never goes pass, start getting request timed out. It never reaches destination, it does clear the office network though.

win2k4

undomiel

I'm getting a different IP address for support.microsoft.com but I'm using OpenDNS here.

207.46.248.248

I can reach both addresses but interestingly enough if I do tracert to the 64.4.52.254 address it dies as soon as it jumps off of Cox's network. A tracert to 207.46.248.248 makes it through msn before dying. Try that address and see if it works any better for you.

hypnotoad

It could be the ISP's issue -- bad router somewhere. Sometimes we lose the ability to get to certain sites but it usually comes back in a day or two. How long has it been a problem?

It's possible another IP will work -- i'm sure it's heavily colocated and load balanced.

hypnotoad

Yeah, it's possible another IP will work -- i'm sure it's heavily colocated and load balanced.

dynamik

nl wrote:

I also get 64.4.52.254 support.microsoft.akadns.net but can't ping it...maybe it doesn't respond to pings. if you traceroute it, does it make it out of your ISP's network?

It didn't for me either. It is still an easy way to test DNS though. I can access it through a browser, so I really wasn't concerned with network connectivity.

Mishra

oh... yeah Microsoft has been blocking ICMP for many years now.

win2k8

207.46.248.248 does not work for me either. I noticed this problem yesterday when I was trying to lookup some kb article. And its still going on today.

I was able to reach further using 207.46.248.248 for tracert

win2k4

dynamik

tracert is basically just a series of pings, so if MS doesn't respond to ICMP requests, it would make sense that tracert would drop-off once it reach MS's network.

You might want to give your ISP a call and see if they can reach it. That would at least help determine where the problem lies.

win2k8

Okay will do. I found a workaround until then, i'm using kproxy, and it works fine using the proxy. So it may be infact the ISP, going to call them when i'm free.

Thanks for everyone's help.

win2k4