Bug Problem Accessing Physics Forums

[dimension10]

A few days back when I came to Physics Forums, I noticed a pop-up telling me to install "Taptalk notifier" which would notify me whenever a new post would come in a forum which I had subscribed to. It worked quite well for a few days and then suddenly I couldn't access Physics forums and my Browser (Chrome) would say that the DNS lookup failed. After I uninstalled the Taptalk notifier (because I thought it was causing my battery to run out quickly), I could then access Physics Forums properly again.

So, was the problem really related to the Taptalk notifier or was Physics Forums down for a few days?

 

[Fredrik]

I don't know what that app does exactly, so all I can tell you is a) I don't think PF has been down, and b) a DNS lookup is a question of the form "what's the IP address that corresponds to the DNS name www.physicsforums.com?". Your operating system sends such questions all the time, not to PF, but to your internet service provider's DNS server.

Maybe the app is having your operating system ask DNS questions about some other domain name than physicsforums.com. For example, it could try to connect to the developer's website to verify that you have paid for a license before it let's you do anything. Then if the DNS server doesn't recognize the domain name, your app won't know what IP address it should try to connect to, and the whole thing will fail.

 

[dimension10]

I don't know what that app does exactly, so all I can tell you is a) I don't think PF has been down, and b) a DNS lookup is a question of the form "what's the IP address that corresponds to the DNS name www.physicsforums.com?". Your operating system sends such questions all the time, not to PF, but to your internet service provider's DNS server.

Maybe the app is having your operating system ask DNS questions about some other domain name than physicsforums.com. If the app needs those questions answered to work, then this could explain it.

I had tried accessing the ip address corresponding to physics forums when I wasn't able to access it, but it hadn't worked. Thanks for your reply.

 

[Borek]

Forum wasn't down for any extended period of time. Forum is down for a several minutes during backup every day (which is around 8:30 my time, it is 14:41 here now so you can check when I posted and see if it was a moment you had trouble accessing the forum.

Can't comment on tapatalk.

 

[Chemicist]

This isn't something Tapatalk COULD have caused in the first place.

 

[dimension10]

Forum wasn't down for any extended period of time. Forum is down for a several minutes during backup every day (which is around 8:30 my time, it is 14:41 here now so you can check when I posted and see if it was a moment you had trouble accessing the forum.

Can't comment on tapatalk.

No, I couldn't access Physics Forums anytime in the day (or night)

This isn't something Tapatalk COULD have caused in the first place.

I forgot to mention, I am talking about the Free Tapatalk notifier not the Tapatalk app.