We are having problem on out netwek - we run severl computers into a large switch which also has a windows 2000 server connected, which allocates out IP addresses, and a modem and router.

Recently our internet connectivity has been very sporadic. Email (pop) connections have been fine, but ever few minutes we get server not found errors on all websites, before they come back for a bit. Ping tests work, and we can connect to sites using their IP addresses, just not the http adresses, which makes me think it is a DNS issue. I have pinged our ISPs DNS servers and the results are fine - does anyone know what the problem would be and how I could resolve it?

Many thanks for any help

Is your Windows 2000 server also handling DNS? If not, what is, and do you have a DNS forwarder pointed to your ISP DNS servers.

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Most likely your ISP's DNS servers failed to resolve the domain name correctly. Maybe you can try following free DNS servers from OpenDNS, see whether it helps:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

DNS tests ought to start with nslookup before you start changing other stuff.

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unfortunately I didn't set up the network but I know the server handles our DHCP settings so i am assuming it probably does the DNS too. I tried adding our ISPs DNS settings into our router and that failed to make any difference so I am assuming it is our server that handles it. I have tried googling DNS in windows 2000 but have seen a couple of different methods that seem to be for handling DNS - does anyone know a good guide online for how to enter the settings?

Many thanks for all of the help