Surfers browsing the net using BT connections are having difficulties accessing Web sites because of problems with some of the telco giant’s Domain Name Servers.

The problem, which has been ongoing for at least the last two weeks, has led to a steady trickle of complaints to Web hosting companies from clients complaining that their domains are down. In fact the sites are live and well, as attempts to connect through any ISP other than BT show.

Our attempts to speak to someone technically knowledgeable at BT on the matter have also drawn a blank.

The problem does not affect all of BT’s name servers, however, as checks by Gareth Ennis, a director at NSDesign, have revealed.

BT DNS servers that do see many of the domains NSDesign’s hosts include:
194.72.6.52 (ns1.bt.net)
193.113.212.38 (ns2.bt.net)
194.72.6.57 (ns3.bt.net)
194.72.9.34 (ns5.bt.net)
194.74.65.68 (ns6.bt.net)

And some that don't see the domains include:
194.72.6.51 (ns0.bt.net)
194.73.82.242 (ns4.bt.net)
213.1.119.97
213.1.119.98
213.1.119.99
213.1.119.100

Ennis tells us that he’s finding the problem doubly frustrating because another server he controls is not affected by the issue.

To resolve the problem he’s considering moving domains over to it even though this would be "a major inconvenience and guaranteed to cause a few short-term
problems". This he says is deeply undesirable but "better this than allow all our BT-using customers to think that we are at fault." ®