http://199.166.24.10/.servers/ (http://support.open-rsc.org/.servers/)
http://64.40.160.15/helpdesk/dns/

You can freely use any of these servers instead of Comcast's nameservers if you want to
be able to see ALL the domain names on the net, not just the ones in the US Government
controlled nameservers. You will, of course be able to see all the "old" domain names like
..com, but you'll also be able to see all the ORSC new top level domains, too.

199.166.28.10 (PS0.NS2.VRX.NET) - Atlanta, Ga
199.166.29.3 (nl.public.rootfix.net) - Nederlands
199.166.31.3 (NS1.QUASAR.NET) - Orlando, FL, USA
199.5.157.128 (ASLAN.OPEN-RSC.ORG) - Detroit, MI, USA

Also working:
4.2.2.1 (vnsc-pri.sys.gtei.net)
4.2.2.2 (vnsc-bak.sys.gtei.net)
199.166.24.1 [ns1.vrx.net]
204.80.125.130 [pine.higgs.net]

Software (freeware) for those who want to do it the hard way...
'TreeWalk DNS' is a Domain Name Server program which fetches and converts Web Site
human readable names into the numbered addresses your computer needs so that your
browser, email, icq, and ftp programs can surf the Web. For Microsoft Windows® XP /
2000 /.NET /2003 workstations or servers.
http://64.202.167.122 (http://ntcanuck.com/)

Unk wrote:
I don't have all the OS's in front of me right now, but with Windows XP,
right-click on My Network Places, and choose Properties. Find the network
connection you're using, right-click on it, and choose Properties. Then
choose Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and Properties. Choose Use the following
DNS server addresses, don't put in any addresses, and press Advanced. Choose
the DNS tab. Then press Add, and add the DNS servers you wish to use in the
order you wish to use them.

I would suggest that someone who plays well with others will enter their
ISP's DNS servers they'd get by DHCP as the first two, then some public
servers after that. Note that you can put in a huge list if you want.
Depending on your system, only 4 will show in the window, but there is a
scroll bar there. I have 10 servers in my list right now. I'm reasonably
sure that I'll never need that many, but you could enter even more if that's
what you want.

And no third-party software needed.

As I recall, Windows 9x/ME only allows three or four servers entered
manually, but that should be enough for most folks.

And this works even if you have a router. You don't need to make any changes
to your router settings.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Care for your landscape with Black and Decker cordless tools
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/blac...ker/index.html

"Warren" <wholzem@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:HeidnTuWk_XeLsHfRVn-1A@comcast.com...
Warren, I had my DNS settings set that way before last nights Comcast
failures. I use a static IP on my machine but use DHCP on others in the
house. On my machine I had Comcasts two primary DNS servers(68.87.66.196
and xx.xx.64.196) set as #1 and #1 and added a third ORSC Public access
Nameserver to the list. Didn't seem to help web browsing for me as far as I
could notice. My web browsing went to a crawl and I start getting page not
found and kept getting erros when checking mail using my smtp client. I
also had these settings in my router and other computers in my home were
affected the same way. I am wondering if I have done something wrong or if
other issues are at play here. Since I did have another good DNS server in
my search list, why didn't things keep on working? I am wondering but do
the other DNS servers have to fail totally before "whatever" causes a
correct nameserver to take over?

Jbob wrote:
It's possible you might have been caching bad results. Right-click on the
connection, and choose Repair, and see what happens after that. There will
be a 2-second delay for each server that is down, so if your first and
second servers are down, looking-up an uncached entry will take a blink over
4-seconds on the first look-up, but you shouldn't notice a difference while
it's still cached on your local machine. Of course even if you turned-off
DNS caching, once the look-up is complete, things should be normal once the
look-up is complete.

If you want to see what's happening, bring up a command prompt, and type
"nslookup www.google.com". You'll see the failing lookups, followed by a
successful lookup. If you see failed look-ups on all the public servers,
then there's something else wrong with your connection besides DNS servers
being down.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Care for your landscape with Black and Decker cordless tools
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/blac...ker/index.html

Thanks, it's a mute point now since last night when the issues popped I just
changed my DNS servers and kept on chugging away. However I was just
curious how things really worked with settings I thought would make a DNS
failure like that experienced last night pretty much non existant from my
point of view since I should have had a non affected DNS nameserver in my
search list. When I changed my DNS servers I did run the repair(using WinXP
Pro) You did point out some things for me to look at next time this occurs.
I'm just trying to figure out all this works or is supposed to anyway! :-)
Perhaps I need to run the repair each time I suspect DNS failures and allow
my OS to cache a new DNS nameserver. I have applied a registry fix to
disable negative DNS caches. http://cable-dsl.home.att.net/dns_cache.htm
Not sure how that affects what is going on though.

If you have more than one it typically takes 15 seconds per bad lookup
(I think that's the standard client timeout) to work down the list. When
this was setup most web pages had maybe one or two graphics and dialup
was the norm for most everyone. Now for surfing you likely do 10 to 20
DNS lookups per page which can seem to take forever if you have to fail
twice per lookup.