Certain Wifi cannot find server

Product Support Self-hosting

AI-generated summary

A user, Ehud_Adler, successfully set up Discourse on a server with a Google domain but encountered issues the next day when their website couldn’t be found by Safari, despite working fine with the IP address. The problem seemed to be specific to their school’s WiFi, as the website worked on their LTE connection.

Ehud_Adler suspected a DNS issue, and david suggested the school’s DNS might be cached, requiring a reset or update. pfaffman agreed, stating the school’s WiFi might be broken.

To troubleshoot the issue, pfaffman recommended using the Google Toolbox to check DNS configuration. Ehud_Adler followed the advice but wasn’t sure what to look for. pfaffman suggested checking for multiple IP addresses returned for the domain.

After sharing the domain name, qcxchange.com, pfaffman found that the DNS configuration seemed correct, returning only one IP address. If the issue persists, pfaffman suspects the school’s DNS is broken by accident or design.

1

I am not a web developer so I don’t really know this stuff but last night I got Discourse up and running on ocean digital per the install-cloud instructions. I then purchased a google domain and set its server to ocean digital and then set it up in ocean digital. Everything worked well. This morning the website isn’t working anymore. Safari can’t find the server. If I http://IP it works but the image I uploaded as the logo doesn’t show up (? image on mac like the image doesn’t exist or it cant find the URL). What happened? I was so happy I got it working.

Id likes to add that if i ping the website, the correct IP appears but it continuously is pinging 64 bytes… etc. Once again, I don’t know what that means but I thought i’d add it

UPDATE: This only occurs on my school wifi apparently. Tested it on my LTE phone and it worked.

2

Your school has probably cached the old DNS record, you either need to get them to reset it, or wait for it to update automatically.

3

You school wifi is broken. Whether it’s on purpose (because your domain is considered unsafe somehow) or by mistake is unknown.

It could be that it’s just very slow to update DNS and irk work tomorrow.

4

Thanks. That makes sense I guess. Hopefully, they update often. I don’t know how often these things update.

5

We have also seen similar errors when dns is misconfigured or has duplicate entries for the same name.

6

How do I check for that? Its possible that is my issue.

7
8

What exactly am I looking for to see if theres an error? The servers show up when I go to ANY.

9

Does it return more than one IP for your domain? Is there a reason not to share you domain name? It would be easier to tell you the problem than to tell you how to diagnose it.

10

qcxchange.com No reason I didn’t share just didn’t know it would help

11

You can see from Dig (DNS lookup) that it correctly returns just one IP number and it seems to be where Discourse is.

You can google for stuff like “test dns worldwide” to find some other tools. If it doesn’t work tomorrow, my guess remains that your school’s dns is broken by accident or design.

12

Alright thanks so much