Yes, we are all aware that itsallPC was down for a short period.

As far as I can gather, the reason for this was Name Server issues. Name Servers (or DNS; Domain Name Server) are what translates a text FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) such as www.itsallpc.co.uk into a 32-bit Internet Protocol (IP) address such as 213.171.218.201, by use of a record.

Simplified; when your system looks up a name address, it asks your ISP's DNS, who in tern asks it's authoritative name server, and up the heap until it is established which DNS on the Internet has been delegated authority to hold records for the Domain. Looking up an FQDN every time a client requests it would be a lot of unnecessary work for a DNS, so instead the server will cache records that it doesn't own. Sometimes when records are made unavailable or moved to another server, it takes a while to propagate across the internet, while the cached records go stale or are invalidated. For a while, even though the server exists and should resolve fine, you will be unable to resolve the name address and get an IP address. Without the IP, you can't reach the server.

I'm not entirely certain this is what happened, but it looked rather like it.

It shouldnt have happened as we werent doing anything with the DNS or the site. Some problems with fasthosts I guess.

If problems recur, we can change it over to one of our other servers.

Cheers

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