Some URLs not resolving, content not loading (*.edgecastcdn.net)

Question

I've had this issue for more than I can remember, I now gave up trying to fix it myself and decided to ask for help.

It seems that my router cannot resolve content from edgecastcdn.net, wich causes some sites' content to no load properly or at all (i.e: imgur, liveleak, twitter), or sometimes really slowly. This is how Liveleak is displayed for me and every computer in my network: http://i.minus.com/jvOwGbVeDuvK9.png

I've tried clearing the browser cache, using different browsers, emptying the DNS cache, I've checked online and tried many solutions, all to no avail.

Any help will be appreciated.

I'm using Windows XP SP3. I can access all this sites correctly with a VPN.

Answer 1

You say that your router cannot resolve this domain name, but it could be that your router has no problem resolving it, it's just that your ISP (or some other part of the network) is blocking it for some reason.

To see if you can resolve the domain, open up a command prompt and type:

ping edgecastcdn.net

You should get output similar to the following:

C:\Users\Chris>ping edgecastcdn.net

Pinging edgecastcdn.net [72.21.81.13] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 72.21.81.13: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=57
Reply from 72.21.81.13: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 72.21.81.13:
    Packets: Sent = 2, Received = 2, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 26ms, Maximum = 27ms, Average = 26ms
Control-C
^C
C:\Users\Chris>

The important question is whether you get an IP address (72.21.81.13 in the example above) or not. If you do not get an IP address, you know your router's DNS settings are pointing to a DNS with problems. Try Google's DNS, as suggested above.

If you do get an IP address, this would tend to indicate that there's a problem somewhere between your LAN and edgecastcdn.net. You'll want to do a traceroute. Now, on Windows 7, that's the tracert command. I'm not sure whether or not that is included in Windows XP, but if not, you can download traceroute programs.

tracert edgecastcdn.net

That should indicate to you where the problem is. In my case, I have no problem and am able to reach edgecast:

C:\Users\Chris>tracert edgecastcdn.net

Tracing route to edgecastcdn.net [72.21.81.13]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  CISCO60972 [192.168.1.1]
  2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4    11 ms    20 ms    10 ms  dx2we-g3.ed.shawcable.net [64.59.185.121]
  5    29 ms    27 ms    31 ms  66.163.78.14
  6    44 ms    31 ms    31 ms  66.163.78.78
  7    27 ms    25 ms    25 ms  paix1.sea.edgecastdn.net [198.32.134.27]
  8    27 ms    26 ms    27 ms  72.21.81.13

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Chris>