Re: lynx-dev `looking up ... '

[Klaus Weide]

On Mon, 5 Jul 1999, Philip Webb wrote:

> a simple basic question about an occasional occurence:
> why am i told `Looking up www.ft.com' when other URLs are found readily?

You are always told that - you just don't notice if lookup succeeds
quickly.

> my understanding has been that Lynx sends an inquiry to the local DNS
> for the numerical equivalent of the URL, then sends its request to that site,
> so if it can't find FT, it shouldn't be able to find other URLs either
> -- the DNS may be unavailable for some reason -- ,

Your local DNS server has to ask other DNS servers for the address (unless
it already has a response cached).  If those other servers don't respond,
it takes time to time-out.  Lynx is waiting for a response from the local
DNS server which is waiting for a respnse from some other server.

> but simultaneously it has no problem with New Scientist (also in the UK).

Your local DNS server has to ask different remote DNS servers for
different addresses.  If one site's authoritative servers are unreachable
it doesn't affect the servers for other sites. (Unless what's broken
is at the country level or similar).


  Klaus