I have visitor in Asia who is trying to vist my site here in the US but is getting a timeout. I am thinking this might be a DNS issue. I was thinking of having her try a traceroute to see if she is at least getting the correct IP and a partial connection.

The other thing is I think I have virtual hosting. Is there anything about her situation that would keep her from sending my domain name as well as the IP number? I understand both are needed by my host to resolve the correct web site. However, if this were the case, I think she would get an improper page rather than a timeout.

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thank you.

A visitor need only your domain name to visit your site.
Once the domain name is typed into the browser, the browser will ask the computer operating system the internet adress of the server hosting this domain.

If the domain was accessed before, windows will remember it, and give that adresse back.
If not, the operating system will query a DNS resolver (usually the resolvers of the provider). If those resolver already have resolved the IP adress of that site, they too will remember it, and give it back.
If the resolver looked for it before, and did not found the ip adresse, they will again say "this domain is not found", until some time pass and they consider they value to be no more valid, and look up the domain again.

What this means is that any changes to a DNS server must propagate to other DNS servers/resolvers.
If you made a change, or registered the domain in the last 72 hours, give it some time to have this propagation done.
72 hours are the time we mostly recommand to wait.

There are some DNS testing service that exists out there, and they can analyze your DNS configuration and say to you if something could prevent users from accessing it.
I have used that one some time ago [ http://member.dnsstuff.com/pages/dnsreport.php ]

Good information, thanks. I don't understand all of the following, but the main DNS problems found were...
- You have one or more missing (stealth) nameservers.
- All of your nameservers ... are probably at the same physical location.
- One or more of your DNS servers does not accept TCP connections.
- Your master (primary) name server is ... not listed at the parent servers as one of your NS records.

Just to clarify, I tried to bypass the DNS servers and see if I could access my website by entering the IP number. However, this does not work with virtual hosting as the actual domain names are needed by the host to return the correct web pages.

I will ask my webhost to examine the DNS problems. I have also asked my visitor in Asia to try a traceroute to see why the timeout is happening.

I have the same problem. In other words, my website is not accessible everywhere and i am looing potential customers.

I have turned this over to my hosting company, which is iPower. Now we will see if they really support their customers.