Networking failure with bbc.co.uk - "error resolving hostname: timed out"

Question

Online connection failure with bbc.co.uk. I am in Spain. I have Windows 7 on my laptop and have no problems connecting to other websites. But every time I try to connect to the BBC I get "Connection Error" with the details "Error resolving hostname www.bbc.co.uk: timed out" Have tried many different things but no success. Am not computer literate.

Answer 1

It is possibly a problem with your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Their Domain Name Service (DNS) servers may not be providing the correct results or their routers may have a fault in their routing tables or a connection problem to some parts of the Internet.

Here is what I would do:

Check the name

Open a command prompt window (start, all programs, accessories, command prompt)

type nslookup www.bbc.co.uk and press enter.

You should get an answer like this

Server:  ns0.ispname.es
Address:  1.2.3.4

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    www.bbc.net.uk
Address:  212.58.246.93
Aliases:  www.bbc.co.uk

The first part is the name and address of one of your ISP's DNS servers. The second part should be the same as above - although the BBC probably have many web-servers so the actual IP-address may change from time to time.

Check the address

type ping www.bbc.co.uk and press enter.

The response should look like this:

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.246.91] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.58.246.91: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=54
Reply from 212.58.246.91: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=54
Reply from 212.58.246.91: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=54
Reply from 212.58.246.91: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 212.58.246.91:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 49ms, Maximum = 51ms, Average = 50ms

Check your ISP's routers

Type tracert www.bbc.co.uk and press enter

    Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.66]
    over a maximum of 30 hops:

      1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  router.local [192.168.0.254]
      2    45 ms    43 ms    44 ms  router.zaragoza.ispname.es [88.2.3.4]
      3    44 ms    44 ms    43 ms  router.madrid.ispname.es [2.3.4.5]
      4    46 ms    51 ms    44 ms  router.other.ispname.es [7.3.5.22]
      5    44 ms    45 ms    46 ms  router.whatever.ispname.es [11.2.5.6]
      6    50 ms    50 ms    49 ms  router.somthing.ispname.es [34.45.5.6]
      7   147 ms    50 ms    49 ms  99.77.254.140
      8    49 ms    49 ms    50 ms  212.58.238.129
      9    50 ms    49 ms    49 ms  212.58.239.58
     10    51 ms    50 ms    54 ms  212.58.251.44
     11    50 ms    49 ms    49 ms  bbc-vip111.telhc.bbc.co.uk [212.58.244.66]

    Trace complete.

(I have disguised the details of my on ISP's names and addresses)

If your PC produces error messages, it is time for the last step.

Phone your ISP's help-desk

You already pay them to provide help with this sort of problem.

Update your question with more information

You can cut & paste your own results from nslookup, ping and tracert. In the command prompt window, click anywhere with the mouse right-button and choose "mark" from the context-menu. Now use the mouse's left-button to select the command and response text. Press enter to copy the marked region to the clipboard. Paste into your question between lines containing <pre> and </pre>.

Answer 2

A great little site at times like this is:

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

Enter the address of a website and it will tell you if the site is down or if it's a problem with your connection.

Click here for the bbc.co.uk results.

Answer 3

You could try switching to Google Public DNS or OpenDNS.

Answer 4

You might be inadvertently blocking access to the site through an application similar to PeerBlock. For PeerBlock, you could consider allowing HTTP.

Answer 5

It appears that you guys can resolve that hostname just fine (based on Tom C's answer). Your ISP could be using a transparent proxy and the error page you are seeing could originate from that. Are you seeing a browser-specific error page, or is it the same for all browsers? If it is the same, then your ISP is using a transparent proxy, and it is having troubles.

Check for its presence:

http://www.lagado.com/proxy-test

http://www.lagado.com/tools/cache-test