DNS Propagation, incorrect IP resolving for bigpond users.

[IPV-Aaron]

We run multiple web-based services for the health/finance industry and have been facing an ongoing problem for somewhere in the area of six to eight months, where DNS records are not being propagated/refreshed for certain Telstra Bigpond Home and Business customers -mainly in the easern states (QLD seems to have a high rate of problems).

Our primary domain - https://smileright.com.au - resolves correctly to 13.210.146.34 everywhere in the world, except for this handful of customers that are still seeing it resolve to a previous server that was redirected many, many moons ago.

So far our advice to these customers has been along the lines of "turn off your wifi and try reaching it on your cellular data", and it always results in a correct experience for the customer.

Having tried to reach out to support, as well as an internal representative, has resulted with initial responses of "maybe it's a time to live setting issue" (six months time to live? really.) and then followed by silence. There are multiple threads in this forum describing nearly identical issues, and wondering if anyone has had any kind of resolution from Telstra before we discuss further options? Thanks!

[Shellock]

When testing this domain appears to resolve correctly on 13.210.146.34 for our servers. However, that's not to say that it isn't some other issue. 

Have you checked with these users if they are connected via a VPN, have manually configured DNS settings or receive a splash page advising that the page is blocked? 

Is there anything else that these users have in common?

[IPV-Aaron]

Hi Shellock,

While most of the dns tools I've used also show that the sites around the eastern states have propagated, it's just a handful of people in QLD and NSW that appear to be affected. I'm not sure if there might be additional centers that the web based tools aren't checking? 
There is one site in Broadbeach QLD that sometimes times out when trying to reach it, but that returns an AAPT name and not a telstra one.

The interesting part of it is that it's not consistent enough for us to pin-point exactly which data center these customers may be going through that's affected, and all the users so far have been 'non technical' and don't operate VPN's or non standard networking implementation (that I've come across).
We haven't heard of any 'blocked site' splash pages either, they're mainly seeing a complete 'dns not found / 404' screen, or a cached copy of the old site, which is located on an old IP address. 

The only definite common theme however is that these users are on a Bigpond Home account (and a few in Bigpond Business), and on their wifi - the device itself doesn't appear to matter as both phone and desktops have had the issue. The handful that I've spoken to were able to test by change their network to a different service temporarily and got the correct result. However some have performed a dns flush on their machine locally, and it still retrieves the old IP when back on Bigpond. 

Wondering if cycling our A record TTL's might force the network to refresh their records?

[Jupiter]

Can you find out which DNS server their connections are using?
That's about the only way to find out where the problem lies.

[IPV-Aaron]

No problem Jupiter,
I'll try to get in touch with some known affected users and get them to pass me the dns server their connecting through, and will report back

[Shellock]

I know it sounds pretty random, but when you speak to these users, can you ask them the model of their modems and if there is any firewall configurations enabled within the modem? 

[IPV-Aaron]

So while I haven't been able to get the answer to what hardware/firewall config one user has ("It's a telstra one", lol) - I was able to get one of them to pass through their dns details - 61.9.211.6 , which does look like a QLD exchange

[Jupiter]

61.9.211.6 isn't giving a response to anything at the moment (it's not resolving Google or my own domain), so I'd be surprised if they can get to any website. The standard Queensland DNS addresses are 61.9.211.1 and 61.9.211.33 which are both resolving correctly (albeit to the IPv6 address equivalent through my mobile).

[IPV-Aaron]

That's interesting - this guy was sent one of those 'whats my dns' links and returned that .6 location, so through some form of dark casual-non-tech-user arts he's managing it.
It's a bit of comfort to hear that the primary dns servers there don't have an immediate issue.

I'll keep this updated as more info develops

[Jupiter]

If he hasn't customised his settings in the modem, ask him to do a factory reset (there is a small button near the power button that you need to hold in with a pin or paperclip until it restarts). That may pull through updated DNS server addresses when it reconnects.

[IPV-Aaron]

Hey everyone,

After coming back from the holiday period, we're still finding a fair few Queensland-based Telstra users that are experiencing the same problem with our site... 

As per suggestions at the end of last year, we reset all our TTL entries against our records to '300' to try and force a quick update on these. However we now have a company in QLD telling us that the page "smileright.com.au/consumer/(pageroducts)" resolves to an old/defunct 404 page on the previous server still.

Unfortunately, getting these users to reset their own hardware isn't a viable solution as many are cold-call cases, and as such simply abandon the site when it doesn't work for them.

This is still a QLD-only problem by the looks of it

[Yastiandrie]

The .6 address seems like it could be a Telstra Broadband Protect network protection proxy.

Really need more info though to pinpoint it but a question to ask is if they have TBP on their service. Most plans come with it automatically