Are the issues with my domain DNS related?

[Steven P. Ulrick]

Hello, Everyone
I hope that one of the many geniuses that frequent this list might be
able to shed some light on a problem that I am having.  I do run Fedora
Core 6 (very happily, I must say :)) but this is too off topic, please
feel free to contact me off list.

I have fully qualified domain: afolkey2.net.  It can USUALLY be found
thusly:
http://www.afolkey2.net

Tonight when I came home from work, I started seeing problems with
pages loading.  Try the following to see what I mean:
http://www.afolkey2.net/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.afolkey2.net
http://www.afolkey2.net/gallery2/main.php

I use the free dynamic dns service from dnsexit.com.  The nameservers
that they have me point my domain to are as follows:
ns1.dnsexit.com
ns2.dnsexit.com

When I noticed the severe issues described above, I ran "ping" on each
of those two servers.  The edited results of "ping ns1.dnsexit.com"
look something like this:
PING ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=417 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=436 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=375 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=4 ttl=48 time=349 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=5 ttl=48 time=258 ms

--- ns1.dnsexit.com ping statistics ---
49 packets transmitted, 46 received, 6% packet loss, time 48033ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 91.901/433.380/827.993/223.834 ms

That didn't look very fair :), so I ran ping on that server again:
PING ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=88.1 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=98.5 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=89.0 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=4 ttl=48 time=86.9 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=5 ttl=48 time=89.0 ms

--- ns1.dnsexit.com ping statistics ---
87 packets transmitted, 84 received, 3% packet loss, time 86027ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 85.584/91.493/108.933/4.825 ms

But, if I run "ping ns2.dnsexit.com" the results (again edited) look
like this:

PING ns2.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=23.2 ms
64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=23.1 ms
64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=21.1 ms
64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=18.6 ms
64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=5 ttl=53 time=23.3 ms

--- ns2.dnsexit.com ping statistics ---
42 packets transmitted, 42 received, 0% packet loss, time 41040ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 18.630/25.121/40.702/4.839 ms



In this case, the times seem much quicker, and you will notice that
unlike when I pinged ns1.dnsexit.com, there was no packet loss.  But
you will also notice that when I ran "ping ns2.dnsexit.com" that the
server that appeared to be the one that was queried is
"nd188.dnsexit.com", not "ns2.dnsexit.com"

I don't know what (if any) the significance of that fact is.  I merely
observe it.

If nothing else, I THINK I can safely assume that they are having some
issues on their end.  Nonetheless, do any of you have any suggestions
about free dynamic DNS services that you have had good fortune with?

Anyway, thank you in advance for any help that you may be able to give
me.

Steven P. Ulrick

[Tim]

On Thu, 2007-08-09 at 04:30 -0500, Linus Ulrick wrote:
>  I have fully qualified domain: afolkey2.net.  It can USUALLY be
> found
>  thusly:
>  http://www.afolkey2.net
>  
>  Tonight when I came home from work, I started seeing problems with
>  pages loading.  Try the following to see what I mean:
>  http://www.afolkey2.net/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.afolkey2.net
>  http://www.afolkey2.net/gallery2/main.php 
The website didn't load, first go, here.  But the stats page did.  Very
odd.  Both did eventually load, but both slowly.  Though, since the
pages I had to look at were all "generated" things (stats and photo
galleries), that's not uncommon.  Such things are often painfully slow,
in my experience.

It should be noted that making stats public can subject you to referrer
spam:  Spammers linking to your pages, hoping to turn up in your stats,
and hoping that you publish your stats, or publish what refers to you in
some other way, so that you give them free advertising.  You can get
deluged by them, and some quite unsavoury things, too.

>  I use the free dynamic dns service from dnsexit.com.  The
> nameservers
>  that they have me point my domain to are as follows:
>  ns1.dnsexit.com
>  ns2.dnsexit.com
>  
>  When I noticed the severe issues described above, I ran "ping" on each
>  of those two servers.  The edited results of "ping ns1.dnsexit.com"
>  look something like this:
>  PING ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173) 56(84) bytes of data.
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=417 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=436 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=375 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=4 ttl=48 time=349 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=5 ttl=48 time=258 ms 
[tim@bigblack ~]$ ping ns1.dnsexit.com 
PING ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=227 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=227 ms
64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=226 ms

I got fairly consistent results for either name server, and fairly
similar ones for the webserver address:

[tim@bigblack ~]$ ping afolkey2.net
PING afolkey2.net (74.134.123.247) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 74-134-123-247.dhcp.insightbb.com (74.134.123.247): icmp_seq=1 ttl=132
time=258 ms
64 bytes from 74-134-123-247.dhcp.insightbb.com (74.134.123.247): icmp_seq=2 ttl=132
time=257 ms
64 bytes from 74-134-123-247.dhcp.insightbb.com (74.134.123.247): icmp_seq=3 ttl=132
time=260 ms

It should also be noted that pinging a machine is quite a different
thing than using some other service on it.  You can get good or bad ping
responses that are contrary to how their services respond.  All a ping
test is how they respond to pings.  :-\

I did a "dig" on your domain name, which is just looking up domain
records, the thing that you need to test, and got the following
response:

[tim@bigblack ~]$ dig www.afolkey2.net

; <<>> DiG 9.4.1-P1 <<>> www.afolkey2.net
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 58276
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.afolkey2.net.              IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.afolkey2.net.       120     IN      CNAME   afolkey2.net.
afolkey2.net.           120     IN      A       74.134.123.247

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
afolkey2.net.           120     IN      NS      ns1.dnsexit.com.
afolkey2.net.           120     IN      NS      ns2.dnsexit.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.dnsexit.com.        172799  IN      A       63.223.76.173
ns2.dnsexit.com.        172799  IN      A       64.182.102.188

;; Query time: 890 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.2#53(192.168.1.2)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug  9 19:15:18 2007
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 143

Which, while being about four times longer to complete (the query time)
than looking up some other domains I just tried (around 200 mS instead
of around 900 mS), is still not terribly slow.  Certainly not as slow as
their webserver was to respond.  So, I'd be more concerned about things
other than their DNS servers.

You probably also want to do some tests on the HTTP server response
time, but I don't have anything to tell you how to test that.  That's
response time, more than download speed.  People will put up with things
taking a little while to finish downloading, so long as they start
fairly promptly.

>  when I ran "ping ns2.dnsexit.com" that the server that
> appeared to be
>  the one that was queried is "nd188.dnsexit.com", not
> "ns2.dnsexit.com" 
The same here, but forward and reverse name look ups don't have to match
(a fact often overlooked by some overzealous anti-spam people).  It's
quite likely that whatever does their second name server does more than
just be a name server, and they might have named the device for that
purpose rather than just the name serving feature.

[tim@bigblack ~]$ dig +short  ns1.dnsexit.com
63.223.76.173
[tim@bigblack ~]$ dig +short -x 63.223.76.173
ns1.dnsexit.com.

[tim@bigblack ~]$ dig +short  ns2.dnsexit.com
64.182.102.188
[tim@bigblack ~]$ dig +short -x 64.182.102.188
nd188.dnsexit.com.

However, this is revealing (below).  There's no A record (or any answer)
to trying to find out the IP for their second name server, by the other
domain name.  That could well be a problem, it's just as well that's
their second name server, not the first one.

[tim@bigblack ~]$ dig nd188.dnsexit.com

; <<>> DiG 9.4.1-P1 <<>> nd188.dnsexit.com
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 50072
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;nd188.dnsexit.com.             IN      A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
dnsexit.com.            1195    IN      SOA     ns2.dnsexit.com. admin.netdorm.com.
2000060701 12000 2400 604800 1200

;; Query time: 15 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.2#53(192.168.1.2)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug  9 19:37:16 2007
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 89

You might bring that to their attention, and ask them if they know why
things are running slowly at the moment.

>  If nothing else, I THINK I can safely assume that they are having
> some
>  issues on their end.  Nonetheless, do any of you have any suggestions
>  about free dynamic DNS services that you have had good fortune with? 
I occasionally use no-ip.com, which I see is slightly faster at
responding (667 mS).  But then that's the speed between me and them, and
will be different between them and someone else.  Likewise, with yours.

-- 
[tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr
2.6.22.1-41.fc7 i686 i386

Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5.  Today, it's FC7.

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.

[Steven P. Ulrick]

On Thu, 09 Aug 2007 19:42:15 +0930
Tim <ignored_mailbox(a)yahoo.com.au&gt; wrote:

>  On Thu, 2007-08-09 at 04:30 -0500, Linus Ulrick wrote:
>  > I have fully qualified domain: afolkey2.net.  It can USUALLY be
>  > found thusly:
>  > http://www.afolkey2.net
>  > 
>  > Tonight when I came home from work, I started seeing problems with
>  > pages loading.  Try the following to see what I mean:
>  > http://www.afolkey2.net/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.afolkey2.net
>  > http://www.afolkey2.net/gallery2/main.php
>  
>  The website didn't load, first go, here.  But the stats page did.
>  Very odd.  Both did eventually load, but both slowly.  Though, since
>  the pages I had to look at were all "generated" things (stats and
>  photo galleries), that's not uncommon.  Such things are often
>  painfully slow, in my experience. 
See my response in another part of this thread that explains how I
fixed my problem.  See especially my references to /etc/hosts.
Usually, my gallery works great. Even on a Windows ME dial-up machine
that I tried it on. Of course, sometimes it is a little slow.  What I
was seeing locally (I THINK "locally" is a big key here) was a whole
other animal entirely.  

>  It should be noted that making stats public can subject you to
>  referrer spam:  Spammers linking to your pages, hoping to turn up in
>  your stats, and hoping that you publish your stats, or publish what
>  refers to you in some other way, so that you give them free
>  advertising.  You can get deluged by them, and some quite unsavoury
>  things, too. 
Point well taken.  The link is now gone.  Thank you very much for
pointing this out to me :)

>  It should also be noted that pinging a machine is quite a different
>  thing than using some other service on it.  You can get good or bad
>  ping responses that are contrary to how their services respond.  All
>  a ping test is how they respond to pings.  :-\ 
You have taught me something else now.  Two things so far in this
email...

Also, I will look through the parts of your response that I trimmed
out and see if there is anything I can use from those parts.

Thank you again for your help.
Steven P. Ulrick

[Andy Green]

Somebody in the thread at some point said:
>  Hello, Everyone
>  I hope that one of the many geniuses that frequent this list might be
>  able to shed some light on a problem that I am having.  I do run Fedora
>  Core 6 (very happily, I must say :)) but this is too off topic, please
>  feel free to contact me off list.
>  
>  I have fully qualified domain: afolkey2.net.  It can USUALLY be found
>  thusly:
>  http://www.afolkey2.net
>  
>  Tonight when I came home from work, I started seeing problems with
>  pages loading.  Try the following to see what I mean:
>  http://www.afolkey2.net/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.afolkey2.net
>  http://www.afolkey2.net/gallery2/main.php 
I didn't see anything that made me think about DNS problems at all.
What was the "problem with page loading"?

I would install and run mtr

yum install mtr

mtr www.afolkey2.net

and see what I could see.

-Andy

[Steven P. Ulrick]

On Thu, 09 Aug 2007 11:21:16 +0100
Andy Green <andy(a)warmcat.com&gt; wrote:

>  > Tonight when I came home from work, I started seeing problems
> with
>  > pages loading.  Try the following to see what I mean:
>  > http://www.afolkey2.net/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.afolkey2.net
>  > http://www.afolkey2.net/gallery2/main.php
>  
>  I didn't see anything that made me think about DNS problems at all.
>  What was the "problem with page loading"?
>  
>  I would install and run mtr
>  
>  yum install mtr
>  
>  mtr www.afolkey2.net
>  
>  and see what I could see. 
Hello, Andy
The problem had been that when I attempted to browse pages on my own
website, on the same computer that I run the server on, most pages
would never finish loading.  For instance, on some pages in my Gallery2
installation, maybe one thumbnail would load, then the browser would
just continue with the usual "Transferring data from www.afolkey2.net";,
"Waiting for www.afolkey2.net";, "Read www.afolkey2.net"
Then I found out that my brother Dave had no problems accessing the
site from his computer.  So that got me thinking....

Did a little searching on Google and I ended up changing /etc/hosts
from:
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost

To:
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
127.0.0.1       afolkey2.net    www.afolkey2.net

This fixed my problem.  This brings up another question.  I don't
remember what my /etc/hosts "USED" to look like before this issue
started, but I know a few things:
1. I never had this problem until shortly before I started this thread.
2. I Did Not make any changes to /etc/hosts.  No one else in our house,
no one else at all, in fact, has root access to this machine.

All I know for sure is that everything works now.

Thank you for your attention.
Steven P. Ulrick

P.S.: As an experiment, I commented out my addition to /etc/hosts and
restarted my network and httpd.  The result was that it went right back
to not loading almost every page that I tried.  I un-commented out my
new additions, restarted the network and httpd, and then simply clicked
refresh on the webbrowser that was still "trying" to load a page on my
site.  The result was that the page loaded as desired.

[Tim]

On Fri, 2007-08-10 at 21:08 -0500, Steven P. Ulrick wrote:
>  The problem had been that when I attempted to browse pages on my own
>  website, on the same computer that I run the server on, most pages
>  would never finish loading. 
Before you added to your local loopback addresses, when you browsed your
site were you browsing it via its IP address or a domain name?

And if you were using a domain name, what IP was associated with it at
*that* time?

If you browse your server using an internal LAN address, whether that be
127.0.0.1 or 192.168.1.2, etc., the networking is handled internally by
your computer.  Barring some unusual firewall rules, that should work
fine.

If you try browsing your server using an external address, your
connections (logically) would go out of your network and back in again.
That doesn't always work.  Some systems will not allow internal LAN
addresses to connect to external public ones.  That's the sort of thing
that some hackers will try (fake an internal address to get through your
firewall).  My firewall blocks those sorts of things, and my external
address applies to my router rather than my PC.  If I try to connect to
my external address, from inside my LAN, I end up connecting to the
webserver inside my router, that's used to configure it.  It doesn't
allow you to connect to the WAN side of things.

To confuse things even further, some systems will realise that the
public address is applied to itself, and avoid actually going through
the network, and just route things internally.

Whether you use a local DNS server, or your hosts file, the simplest way
for internally testing a webserver is to have entries that tell your LAN
your webserver domain name refers to an internal LAN address.  However,
this can confuse the Dickens out of scripts that update dynamic
addresses with outside servers.  I avoided that by running my server on
a PC that I don't actually use directly, so it doesn't have confusing
entries for its own domain name.

-- 
[tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr
2.6.22.1-41.fc7 i686 i386

Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5.  Today, it's FC7.

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.

[Steven P. Ulrick]

On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:28:08 +0930
Tim <ignored_mailbox(a)yahoo.com.au&gt; wrote:

Hello, Tim

>  On Fri, 2007-08-10 at 21:08 -0500, Steven P. Ulrick wrote:
>  > The problem had been that when I attempted to browse pages on my own
>  > website, on the same computer that I run the server on, most pages
>  > would never finish loading.
>  
>  Before you added to your local loopback addresses, when you browsed
>  your site were you browsing it via its IP address or a domain name? 
With the domain name - http://www.afolkey2.net
 
>  And if you were using a domain name, what IP was associated with it
> at
>  *that* time? 
The same IP that I have now: 74.134.123.247

Steven P. Ulrick

[Mikkel]

Linus Ulrick wrote:
>  Hello, Everyone
>  I hope that one of the many geniuses that frequent this list might be
>  able to shed some light on a problem that I am having.  I do run Fedora
>  Core 6 (very happily, I must say :)) but this is too off topic, please
>  feel free to contact me off list.
>  
>  I have fully qualified domain: afolkey2.net.  It can USUALLY be found
>  thusly:
>  http://www.afolkey2.net
>  
>  Tonight when I came home from work, I started seeing problems with
>  pages loading.  Try the following to see what I mean:
>  http://www.afolkey2.net/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.afolkey2.net
>  http://www.afolkey2.net/gallery2/main.php
>   
<----------------[ SNIP ]------------------------>

I am not sure what your problem was, but I am not seeing it from
here. Could something have been loading down the server? Possibly a
cron job that puts a load on it, or a lot of web requests? (Your web
logs should show if the later case is the problem.) If you are not
trying to connect from the same location as the server, it could
also be network problems that limit bandwidth on the connection to
the server. (Backhoes can have a drastic affect on network speeds!)
If this server hosts more then your own web pages, then you can also
run into problems when another web site on the server is
experiencing heavy traffic.

In any case, you will want to take a good look at the logs. Make
sure there are not hardware problems, that you are not being subject
to a denial of service attack, or a cracking attempt that is loading
down the server. (Or worse, a successful cracking that has your
server doing other things...)

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

[Rick Stevens]

On Thu, 2007-08-09 at 04:30 -0500, Linus Ulrick wrote:
>  Hello, Everyone
>  I hope that one of the many geniuses that frequent this list might be
>  able to shed some light on a problem that I am having.  I do run Fedora
>  Core 6 (very happily, I must say :)) but this is too off topic, please
>  feel free to contact me off list.
>  
>  I have fully qualified domain: afolkey2.net.  It can USUALLY be found
>  thusly:
>  http://www.afolkey2.net
>  
>  Tonight when I came home from work, I started seeing problems with
>  pages loading.  Try the following to see what I mean:
>  http://www.afolkey2.net/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.afolkey2.net
>  http://www.afolkey2.net/gallery2/main.php
>  
>  I use the free dynamic dns service from dnsexit.com.  The nameservers
>  that they have me point my domain to are as follows:
>  ns1.dnsexit.com
>  ns2.dnsexit.com
>  
>  When I noticed the severe issues described above, I ran "ping" on each
>  of those two servers.  The edited results of "ping ns1.dnsexit.com"
>  look something like this:
>  PING ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173) 56(84) bytes of data.
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=417 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=436 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=375 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=4 ttl=48 time=349 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=5 ttl=48 time=258 ms
>  
>  --- ns1.dnsexit.com ping statistics ---
>  49 packets transmitted, 46 received, 6% packet loss, time 48033ms
>  rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 91.901/433.380/827.993/223.834 ms
>  
>  That didn't look very fair :), so I ran ping on that server again:
>  PING ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173) 56(84) bytes of data.
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=88.1 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=98.5 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=89.0 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=4 ttl=48 time=86.9 ms
>  64 bytes from ns1.dnsexit.com (63.223.76.173): icmp_seq=5 ttl=48 time=89.0 ms
>  
>  --- ns1.dnsexit.com ping statistics ---
>  87 packets transmitted, 84 received, 3% packet loss, time 86027ms
>  rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 85.584/91.493/108.933/4.825 ms
>  
>  But, if I run "ping ns2.dnsexit.com" the results (again edited) look
>  like this:
>  
>  PING ns2.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188) 56(84) bytes of data.
>  64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=23.2 ms
>  64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=23.1 ms
>  64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=21.1 ms
>  64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=18.6 ms
>  64 bytes from nd188.dnsexit.com (64.182.102.188): icmp_seq=5 ttl=53 time=23.3 ms
>  
>  --- ns2.dnsexit.com ping statistics ---
>  42 packets transmitted, 42 received, 0% packet loss, time 41040ms
>  rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 18.630/25.121/40.702/4.839 ms
>  
>  
>  
>  In this case, the times seem much quicker, and you will notice that
>  unlike when I pinged ns1.dnsexit.com, there was no packet loss. 
Check the list of packets and see if you have out of sequence or missing
sequence numbers.  If all that's missing are the last few (most likely
with delays >25mS), what you're seeing is that hitting CTRL-C aborts the
program before those last few packets are received.

>                                                                  But
>  you will also notice that when I ran "ping ns2.dnsexit.com" that the
>  server that appeared to be the one that was queried is
>  "nd188.dnsexit.com", not "ns2.dnsexit.com" 
That's an alias (CNAME).  No big deal.

>  I don't know what (if any) the significance of that fact is.  I
> merely
>  observe it.
>  
>  If nothing else, I THINK I can safely assume that they are having some
>  issues on their end.  Nonetheless, do any of you have any suggestions
>  about free dynamic DNS services that you have had good fortune with?
>  
>  Anyway, thank you in advance for any help that you may be able to give
>  me. 
Run several traceroutes to the DNS servers and the website in question.
You may find an overlength route or possibly discover a flapping route
with one of the ISPs.  This is information their support groups will
want to have.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens(a)internap.com -
- CDN Systems, Internap, Inc.                http://www.internap.com -
-                                                                    -
-            Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers            -
----------------------------------------------------------------------