The BeatGear Cavern

This topic came up recently for some folks who have problems accessing the BGC. In some cases, when DNS is flaky, putting a web site's IP address instead of the hostname in the browser's address bar will bring up the site. In the BGC's case, it will not work. BGC's IP address is 65.98.88.58, however, there are multiple sites hosted on the same box as BGC. Merely going to the IP address won't work, as the underlying web server is looking in the HTTP request your browser normally sends the hostname it's requesting when you're looking for a page. Since there's more than one site on that box, the web server has no way of knowing which site you're looking for (other than the IP address), and displays an error message if you try to access BGC that way.

A simple test you can do to see if DNS is causing the problem is to open up a command prompt on your computer, and type (without the quotes" "ping www.beatgearcavern.com". You should see something that looks like this:

Pinging beatgearcavern.com [65.98.88.58] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 65.98.88.58: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=58
Reply from 65.98.88.58: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=58
Reply from 65.98.88.58: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=58
Reply from 65.98.88.58: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 65.98.88.58:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 26ms, Average = 22ms

The replies are not necessarily important, as pings may be blocked by a firewall somewhere between you and BGC. The important thing is the first line, where you see that the name beatgearcavern.com is being resolved by the DNS system.

If you aren't resolving the name, and you suspect your DNS server, if possible, try an alternate DNS server. Both Comcast and Optimum Online users have had major DNS infrastructure problems, so it's certainly a possibility. Here's a list of publicly-accessible DNS servers that can be used for this type of situation (please don't use these any longer than is necessary, as they could be locked down at any time from abuse):

Verizon (Level3) Nameservers
4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3
4.2.2.4
4.2.2.5
4.2.2.6

SpeakEasy Nameservers
66.93.87.2
216.231.41.2
216.254.95.2
64.81.45.2
64.81.111.2
64.81.127.2
64.81.79.2
64.81.159.2
66.92.64.2
66.92.224.2
66.92.159.2
64.81.79.2
64.81.159.2
64.81.127.2
64.81.45.2
216.27.175.2
66.92.159.2
66.93.87.2

ORSC Public Access DNS Nameservers
199.166.24.253
199.166.27.253
199.166.28.10
199.166.29.3
199.166.31.3
195.117.6.25
204.57.55.100

Sprintlink General DNS
204.117.214.10
199.2.252.10
204.97.212.10

Cisco
128.107.241.185
192.135.250.69