DNS records have Time to Live fields. After that expires, the records become fit for deletion from the DNS system if they can't be renewed.
DNS works on the basis of an Authoratative server and recursive/cached lookups. The US server "leo" is the authoratative server and there is also a backup of that. When you ask for hpcfactor.com your browser checks its local DNS cache, if it is in there then it uses that non-authoratative record to get the IP address and load the site. If it isn't it asks your ISP's DNS server. Same thing happens, except if the ISP doesn't have it, it
(most likely
) asks a root server
(com.
) where hpcfactor is. com. says it has no idea where hpcfactor.com. is, but it has a record that there is a server that does know
(leo
) and that leo should be on xx.xxx.xxx.xx - "go ask leo". This is know as a recursive query.
Your browser then asks leo, but as leo wasn't up it couldn't get the reply from leo telling it that hpcfactor is on an IP address in the UK "so go there you young whippersnapper"
It seems that Insurgent has HPC:Factors running on a very short TTL, 15 minutes in fact. So once the DNS server died, after a couple of hours intermediate DNS servers
(your ISP
) and your PC started deleting the records and in the absence of a workable backup, your browser couldn't raise the website. The only record that was left active was the glue record on com. which didn't work. Therefore no website.
... and that dear friends is how DNS works.
I on the other hand could access the site because I have a DNS server and added a static registration
