Since April, we've been seeing sporadic reports of people not able to
resolve our site (and email bouncing). The only reason we can find that
this might be happening is that Google (and Google Public DNS) has made
a change in the way they handle resolving domains - first, they have
implemented a DNSSEC requirement (not relevant wrt Freelance Traveller),
and second, they have (together with the implementation of the DNSSEC
requirement) started adhering to a more rigorous interpretation of the
DNS query specifications. As a result, many domains, hosted and
self-hosted, have been having problems, and Google has not been
forthcoming about what these domains and hosts need to do to meet the
more rigorous standard.

If you use Google Public DNS as your DNS-of-choice for resolving, you
will continue to see sporadic failures to resolve. If you use your own
ISP's DNS servers, you may not (unless they use Google's). We are not
aware of any problems where OpenDNS is used, nor when Level3's "public"
DNS servers are used.

As I write this, Google is currently resolving freelancetraveller.com.

Yahoo!'s recent incoming-email changes are well known, and affect many
non-Yahoo!-hosted lists. It appears, however, that Yahoo! may also rely
in some way on Google's DNS, and as a result, mail sent from Yahoo! (or
through Yahoo!'s servers from an ISP that outsources mail to Yahoo!) to
a freelancetraveller.com email address may bounce with a failure to
resolve the domain.

Note that if you are attempting to access Freelance Traveller from a
workplace computer, and your organization uses WebSense to block certain
sites/categories of sites, Freelance Traveller is listed by Websense in
its filter category "Games", and will be inaccessible if that filter is
active.

In order to further troubleshoot this ongoing problem - not just the
Yahoo! side, but _any_ failure to resolve - I'd appreciate reports being
sent to freetrav@gmail.com. If you can, please include the DNS settings
on your computer (for website failures); for email failures, please
include the complete failure message.

Google Public DNS IP Addresses:   8.8.8.8
                                  8.8.4.4

Level3 "Public" DNS IP Addresses: 4.2.2.1
                                  4.2.2.2

OpenDNS Public DNS IP Addresses:  208.67.222.222
                                  208.67.220.220
                                  208.67.222.220
                                  208.67.220.222

--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported
    Traveller® Fanzine and Resource

editor@freelancetraveller.com
http://www.freelancetraveller.com
http://freelancetraveller.downport.com/

®Traveller is a registered trademark of
Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2014. Use of
the trademark in this notice and in the
referenced materials is not intended to
infringe or devalue the trademark.

Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following
enterprises for hosting services:

CyberNET Web Hosting (http://www.cyberwebhosting.net)
The Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com)