Shareaza Down Temporarily
January 24, 2003
Thomas Mennecke
News from the Shareaza chat room on P2PChat.org is reporting the host cache server and homepage is currently down. This is due to a DNS failure. This has made connection to the Gnutella2 network difficult especially for those who haven't hooked up to this community in a while. However, if you've been connected as recently as a few days, linking up to this network shouldn't be as much of a problem. The more recent your connection, the more current you host cache list will be, thereby reducing connection problems.
For those unfamiliar with DNS technology (from DNS.net):
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed Internet directory service. DNS is used mostly to translate between domain names and IP addresses, and to control Internet email delivery. Most Internet services rely on DNS to work, and if DNS fails, web sites cannot be located and email delivery stalls.
Since Shareaza uses the name of its host cache server and not its IP address, it becomes difficult to connect to the Gnutella2 network. More specifically, Shareaza is setup to look for the host cache at:
http://www.shareaza.com/cache/cache.aspx.
The DNS error is also affecting the Shareaza homepage. You can still access the Shareaza homepage through its IP address:
http://66.199.183.172
To get around this issue, you can add the IP address of Gnutella2 host cache to Shareaza. When you open Shareaza, goto "View"|"Discovery"|"Add Service". Then paste in this IP address:
http://66.199.183.172/cache/cache.aspx.
Unfortunately, Mike Stokes, the lead programmer of Shareaza will be away for the next few days, delaying any resolution to this situation until that time.
You can discuss this article here
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=49