Network World has the article Is massive DNS hack responsible for Charter Internet outage?

On DownDetector as well as on Reddit, some customers said that changing the DNS servers to Google’s public DNS IP addresses of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for IPv4, or 2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844 for IPv6 fixed their problems. Some people claimed that didn’t work, but most comments claim that changing the DNS restored their Internet. People who are not fans of Google reportedly changed their DNS to OpenDNS IPs of 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 to restore service.

As I was experiencing the outage last night, I experimented with what I could and couldn’t reach on the internet. Because of those experiments, I suspected it was a DNS problem. However, since I couldn’t reach very much on the Internet, I couldn’t find instructions on changing my DNS settings.

I have followed the link above to OpenDNS IPs. At first, I set up DNS on one Windows-7 machine. Then I found the instructions to set up the DNS on my router, so I set that too. Now, all three wired connections and any wireless connections will use the OpenDNS IPs for its Dynamic Name Servers.

I supposed I could use a DNS from my web server host company to get some diversity of servers. I’ll do that if OpenDNS doesn’t prove to be extremely reliable.

The Real News Network has the interview The Powers Behind The Islamic State.

AHMED: On the one hand, I think the first thing is, do we–in terms of–like, we need to cut off the source. So there’s been a lot of press reports about the Islamic State have basically got in and they’ve looted cities and they’ve got loads of money and they’re kind of self funding, and I’ve got no doubt that they were looting cities and they’ve boosted their economic power. But the fact is is that what’s been kind of suppressed by that kind of what–I would say kind of somewhat banal reporting, which actually has relied on some questionable anonymous sources, what they’ve not looked at is that money trail which is coming from the Gulf states. We have abundant evidence, the U.S. military has abundant evidence–the State Department’s been tracking this for years, so has the FBI–we know very well where the funding is coming from. That funding is coming from the Gulf states. We have not moved to stop that funding. Since 9/11, there have been political obstacles, bureaucratic obstacles, and intelligence officials, very sincere guys who’ve been tracking this have been complaining that we’ve been blocking that for political reasons, blocking real action to cut that down. So the regulatory mechanisms to sort that out have been–they’re not being pursued. And that’s on the British scene, on the American scene, on the European scene. So that needs to be done. Where’s the will to stop that? And why has it not being stopped? If we don’t stop these guys, why are we not doing that? So that raises a fundamental question: if we’re not willing to cut off the source of funding for these kind of movements, that raises questions about what we’re doing. So that would be the first step, I would say.

I would be very wary of the propaganda coming from our own government, right and left, trying to drum up the reasons for going to war against the forces that we have been arming and funding. All that talk of refusal to back the opposition to Asad in Syria by Obama, and the counter story from Clinton, may very well be a complete smokescreen. The money and support may not be flowing directly from us, but it seems we have been facilitating it all along.