Windows XP & ATTBI Broadband

[SMKelly]

Anyone having problems with the new ATTBI Broadband and Wwindows XP? I am not so sure that it is all ATTBI's problem. Sometimes I have no problem surfing the web and sometimes I get "unable to view web page". Or certain parts of a web page don't load. Oh, and Chat windows won't load at all. I wonder if XP is not so compatable with the new ATTBI Broadband? It worked fine with the old Excite provider.

[diurnal]

Broadband and windows does not mix somtimes, and its a pain to figure it out. I suspect that its not compatibile withxp, att that is.
I would go to www.google.com (http://www.google.com) and type in att, or find there broadband page(att). Im sure if you get tech support , theyll probably be clueless as usual.
The problems you are encountering sounds like dns configurations, at least that will head you in to some direction.
Post back about XPs every going saga about compatibility

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Sledgehammer will save the day!

[macellarius]

Regarding the "page not found" error (for obviously existing pages) that people are reporting. Here is what is happening and a suggestion on how to fix the problem.

Before a web page like www.yahoo.com (http://www.yahoo.com) can be loaded, the domain name must be resolved to an IP address (e.g. 64.58.76.228). This resolution is performed by a domain name server (a DNS server). Each resolution by a DNS server returns the proper IP for the domain name and a TTL (time to live) value for the resolution. The TTL specifies how long the result may be cached. Caching allows subsequent resolution to take place directly out of the local machine's cache rather than going over the network to the DNS server. Caching is a good thing. Windows 2000 and Windows XP have client DNS resolves that cache.

As it happens, some of attbi.com's DNS servers are, at times, returning bogus resolutions. In particular they are failing to resolve valid domain names. Windows 2000 and Windows XP can also cache negative responses. So when Windows XP asks an attbi.com name server for www.ibm.com (http://www.ibm.com) and gets a response that www.ibm.com (http://www.ibm.com) does not exist, Windows will cache this negative response. Likewise, when the client resolver gets a negative response from any DNS server on it's list of DNS servers, it stops any other pending queries for the same name on any other DNS server. This is by design. Subsequent requests for www.ibm.com (http://www.ibm.com) will immediately return "does not exist" until the cached negative response times out and is removed from the cache. With a non-caching DNS resolver (e.g. such as Windows 95 has), subsequent requests will once again query a DNS server.

So with DNS servers that return false negative responses and a client resolver that caches negative responses you can get the kind of resolution problems that people are reporting (and which I have witnessed myself).

Some people have suggested solving the problem by using different DNS servers. This will indeed work if the chosen DNS servers function correctly and do not return bogus responses. However, in a DHCP-configured environment like attbi.com's, it's best, in the long run, to accept and use the DHCP-supplied DNS servers. This allows attbi.com to manage things automatically over time. attbi.com DNS servers should, as attbi.com gets it act together, be faster to respond than other servers since they will be closer (network hop wise) to your machine. Finally, other ISPs won't enjoy you using their servers.

Some people have suggested turning off the DNS resolver service (the client side DNS resolver) on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. This will indeed work for this failure case. However, turning off the Windows DNS resolver is not an optimal solution. I don't recommend it. The resolver is a very handy piece of code that does a lot work and has a lot of smarts to accomplish DNS resolution effectively. In particular, caching is a good thing. However, negative response caching, particularly in the face of false negatives, may not be ideal.

A better solution would be to limit or turn off negative response caching. This is accomplished by setting the NegativeCacheTime registry entry (HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\P arameters). The NegativeCacheTime registry entry specifies for how many seconds negative responses are cached. The default value is 300 seconds. Setting the value to 0 will specify that negative responses should not be cached at all. (NegativeSOACacheTime should also be set to 0 if you want to turn off all negative response caching.)

For more information, see
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prjj_ipa_vitx.asp

[Ghost_Hacker]

That's some good information macellarius. I've gotten bite by this problem on some Win2k boxes. In my case I choose not to change the negative cache time but just changed the order of my DNS "list". But the registry hack you give is a better solution as I have not run across any situation where negative response caching does any good.

[Ghost_Hacker]

That's some good information macellarius. I've gotten bite by this problem on some Win2k boxes. In my case I choose not to change the negative cache time but just changed the order of my DNS "list". But the registry hack you give is a better solution as I have not run across any situation where negative response caching does any good.

[Ghost_Hacker]

Let me repeat that...... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[This message has been edited by Ghost_Hacker (edited 12-13-2001).]

[sea69]

too funny

heh

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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sea1_69@hotmail.com

homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/3.html)


;)~

[rond36]

XP doesn't have that key all it has is
Default.........(value not set)
serviceDll......"%systemroot%\system32\dnsrslvr.dll

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Alright who messed it up this time!

[Jumby]

Go here and make sure that you have the correct setup for XP. It should be same as Windows 2000. http://help.broadband.att.com/listfaqs.jsp?category_id=107&category_level=2