Saturday, January 25, 2020

I couldn't access the steam store (DNS issue)

I just wanted to make my kid a steam account.

But I couldn't.

Then I realized that I couldn't access the steam store at all. Strange.

I'm an IT guy. I got this.

No malware.

Restarting didn't help.

I guess I have to actually think.

A Google search wasn't helpful. Even if I listed the error code I was getting when I tried to create a new steam account.

Ok, it isn't down for everyone.

But when I nslookup, the resulting IP is a .jp domain. And it seems legitimate...but decidedly *not* Valve's Steam.

Maybe my router's settings are causing trouble. After all, *it* is my DNS provider.

...nope, my router has some built-in tools and shows my isp as my dns provider. So this strange result is coming from Comcast.


The fix was easy enough, just specify 8.8.8.8 with 8.8.4.4 as my DNS servers in IPv4 properties, or in my router's WAN settings. Then ipconfig /flushdns. But why it happened and why more people weren't (presumably) affected, I have no idea.


*more research* -- even though my router listed my ISP as my DNS provider, it seems to be a router issues instead of a ISP issue...as far as I can tell. Or at least I can't fault comcast at this point without more research. Changing my router's DNS to 8.8.8.8 fixed this for me. I'll keep looking into the Comcast issue and report back if I have an update.

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