www.feathouston.org Connection Issues

Several people have reported problems trying to connect to www.feathouston.org from certain computers. We have investigated the problem and now believe that it is related to Comcast. If you connect to the internet through Comcast (probably through a Cable Modem) you may not be able to reach this site.

We believe that the problem is most likely a DNS caching name server issue with Comcast. DNS stands for "Dynamic Name Server" and in layman terms it converts the url (ie www.feathouston.org) into an IP address (ie 67.15.213.8). For example open a web browser and instead of entering a website name enter 209.191.93.52 and you should be taken to yahoo. Each ISP (ie Comcast, AOL,AT&T, Earthlink etc) has a list (the dns name server) of websites and a corresponding list of IP address's so when you type in the url name, the computer knows where to go to get to the website. If for some reason the website IP address changes (and ours did change several months ago) and the ISP doesn't correctly update their DNS name server you will be unable to access the website until the DNS is updated correctly. 

We have contacted Comcast and hope that they will resolve this problem. In the meantime there is a short term fix for this. On your computer find the file "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" and open this file with notepad. In this file you should see the number "127.0.0.1" and the words "localhost'. Underneath "127.0.0.1" type "67.15.213.8" and underneath "localhost" type "www.feathouston.org". Then resave the file. Now every time you type www.feathouston.org into a web browser, this file will automatically tell your computer to go to the correct IP address. Unfortunately if the IP address changes in the future you will need to delete this line. 

DISCLAIMER: We are offering this advice to try and help you connect to FEAT-Houston. We are not computer experts and cannot warrant that the solution above will fix your problem or that there won't be adverse side effects. We also cannot offer technical support if this solution does not work.

If you are a Comcast customer and CAN connect to this site, or if you are NOT a Comcast customer and CAN NOT connect we would appreciate it if you would contact us.