Why, when I log into Firestorm, does it give me "Login failed. DNS could not resolve the host name"?

[Hunter Riverstone]

Why, when I log into Firestorm, does it give me "Login failed. DNS could not resolve the host name."? I know my internet works. Obviously. Or I wouldn't be typing here. It's happening every time I log in.And when I log in, my friends list refuses to load. It takes me several restarts of Firestorm to get it to load. I can't use any other viewer. Firestorm is the only one that works on my pc. PLEASE HELP! Thanks.

[Rolig Loon]

Your Internet does work, but there's a lot of difference between "working" and working well enough to sustain the heavy bandwidth use and continuous data streaming that SL expects. SL is not like online games.  Your viewer and SL's servers trade information back and forth all the time, so even a small interruption or overload can make you drop your connection.  If you're getting that DNS message, your viewer and SL's servers have temporarily lost the ability to talk to each other. Unless there's a problem with the servers (Always check http://status.secondlifegrid.net/ first), it's probably something on your end. So....

(1) Try shutting off your computer, unplugging the router and modem for a couple of minutes, and then plugging them back in and restarting. That simple step may clear up everything

2) Supplement whatever DNS settings your ISP assigns you as a default. Don't remove those ones, but add Google's free public DNS servers above them in the list, so that your router uses Google's DNS servers as the default. Here's how >>> http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/