www.cisco.com down?

[darren.g]

Is anyone else getting a DNS error when trying to access www.cisco.com?

I get a protocol redirect from http://www.cisco.com to https://www.cisco.com, and then the following error

Service Unavailable - DNS failure

The server is temporarily unable to service your request.  Please try again later.

Reference #11.14dcf180.1341364559.1740d61

I'm pretty sure it's not my DNS - I can traceroute to www.cisco.com and it resolves fine. Logging into the support forums works via the SSO site, as does the support forums themselves (obviously), but the main site just doesn't respond.

Cheers

[Leo Laohoo]

Must be your shoes Darren.  

[darren.g]

leolaohoo wrote:
Must be your shoes Darren.   

Hey! There's nothing wrong with my shoes! They're all shiney and bright, even! :-)

[darren.g]

Must be something weird in the latest update to Firefox nightly causing it, because when I Google cisco.com and follow the link, it works.

Weird!

[zoltan.karpati]

Thank you for the trick! I have been experiencing the same issue for a couple of hours today:

Service Unavailable - DNS failure

The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later.

Reference #11.c90a1602.1433593459.151c758f

I try to access the topics directly as I am preparing for the CCIE lab so I am trying to get familiar with the way topics are organized. It works if accessing through google. Hopefully google will be available if the "Select Your Product..." page will be unavailable during the exam :)

Thank you,

Zoltan

[damiangoh · Accepted solution]

I am also facing the problem. Cant seem to enter the cisco web site.

[darren.g]

Well, at least it wasn't just me!

So Ner Ner, Leo! Not my shoes at all!

:-)

[Jeremy Justin]

I am also receiving a DNS error when trying cisco.com/go/software. This error also shows when I go directly to support and enter a specific phone model, the next screen shows this error:

Service Unavailable - DNS failure

The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later.

Reference #11.493de93f.1354557577.2c2c6266

[JohnUrbanek]

Experiencing the same problem just about all day today.  Have tried from several computers and locations.

Service Unavailable - DNS failure

The server is temporarily unable to service your request.  Please try again later.

Reference #11.493de93f.1354573371.2ec96f5c

[craig.phillips]

Same here from Vancouver, Canada:

Service Unavailable - DNS failure

The server is temporarily unable to service your request.  Please try again later.

Reference #11.493de93f.1354578772.2f96bdd4

Happens at complete random times. Some computers can't get to www.cisco.com at all and other will be able to browse for awhile and then hit it.

[bnidacoc]

Everyone here has been reporting this.  Different browsers (IE, Chrome, FF), I even got it at home a few days back, so I know it is not our network.

[chadreynolds]

I had the same issue, but DNS is resolving for me now as 12/4/2012 @ 7:50AM PST.  Please refresh your browser.

[bnidacoc]

I doubt this is a "my DNS issue."  This message is an HTML formated response to the users of their web servers.  Cisco's DNS server arrays must be experiencing problems as their servers can't resolve something nessesary for forwards/logging/misc.

I wonder if eventually Cisco will remove the details of the HTML response to obfuscate the matter and we'll get a vague response.

[JohnUrbanek]

I narrowed down this problem to Akamai's CDN -- which Cisco.com uses.  Note that the details below might change but this is as it exists at the moment.

You can see below that www.cisco.com. makes its way through a pile of CNAME's before arriving at e144.dscb.akamaiedge.net. which has an A record.

C:\Users\johnu>dig @8.8.8.8 www.cisco.com. a

; <<>> DiG 9.8.1 <<>> @8.8.8.8 www.cisco.com. a
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 16243
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.cisco.com.                 IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.cisco.com.          2537    IN      CNAME   www.cisco.com.akadns.net.
www.cisco.com.akadns.net. 225   IN      CNAME   wwwds.cisco.com.edgekey.net.
wwwds.cisco.com.edgekey.net. 1304 IN    CNAME   wwwds.cisco.com.edgekey.net.globalredir.akadns.net.
wwwds.cisco.com.edgekey.net.globalredir.akadns.net. 228 IN CNAME e144.dscb.akamaiedge.net.
e144.dscb.akamaiedge.net. 19    IN      A       184.87.144.170

;; Query time: 31 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Tue Dec 04 10:36:48 2012
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 212

From here I used Firefox's Live HTTP Header extension to make a request to e144.dscb.akamaiedge.net. while sending www.cisco.com for the Host: header.

Banging on the Replay button a few times yields different results.  Sometimes www.cisco.com loads (without CSS and such -- which is fine given the crude test) and most of the time the venerable Service Unavailable error rears its head.

This looks like an Akamai CDN web server or service issue.

Please work with Akamai to get this fixed as this issue is greatly impacting our ability to interact with Cisco (support, downloads, data sheets, etc.).

[bnidacoc]

The end of my conversation with 184.87.144.170...

HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
Server: AkamaiGHost
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 269
Expires: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:44:02 GMT
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:44:02 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Accept-Encoding

Service Unavailable - DNS failure

The server is temporarily unable to service your request.  Please try again
later.

Reference #11.493de93f.1354646642.36acd462

EDIT: Oh, this was http://www.cisco.com.  I can't get to the support page to open a new TAC case, I go to support..cisco.com, I get refered to http://www.cisco.com/tac/, but again, it responds with "Service Unavailable."  I've been getting this since last week, however, it is much more frequent today.