iPhone update server could not be contacted, but why ?

I did all of this and still no joy. Finally I ended up setting up a transparent proxy through Germany. Worked like a charm. \o/ MacRumors had a few pretty good answers, including changing your IP to mirror Google's, but I was quite frankly too lazy to screw around with my router. The proxy was easier to do and just as effective.

Clearly it's better to be German today.

None of the suggestions in this thread helped me. However, what *did* help was this:

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

As soon as I switched the DNS settings, it connected instantly. Hope this helps someone. (And sorry if someone already said this and I missed it. 🙂 )

Using Google Public DNS resolved it. Perfect and many thanks.

yep, looks like DNS "method" works! Thanks a million.

Thanks, The Google DNS works like a champ!!!!

Works like a charm, the moment I changed the DNS setting in the System Preferences > Network (to 8.8.8.8) iTunes found the server and the iOS file started downloading.

Many thanks for the tip! 🙂

Confirmed that that Google pub DNS settings fix this issue.

Had the same problem connecting to the iphone software update server with my iPhone 4. As soon as I changed the DNS it worked just fine. What's up?

Absolutely awesome - I've been frustrated for days - and after 4 calls to Apple Support still no solution...until this! Thanks Doug!! What a relief...

I mean thanks LesliefromTN - and you too Doug.

I had the same problem....changed DNS on my MacPro

to google 8.8.8.8. And bam! Everything worked...***? Somebody explain?

Is your system date/time correct? Apple updates will not work correctly if your system date/time differs significantly from the Apple Server date/times. I was experiencing the identical problems that everyone was discussing on this thread and nothing worked until I updated my system date/time to be correct. I have since replaced the internal CMOS battery on my PC.

Jimmy, you are correct that updates will not work if there is a large time diffrence, but most Apple devices by default connect to one of the Apple time servers and hence by your implicatation their time servers must be out of sync by a pretty large margine.

I feel there is something more to with ISP's not keeping their DNS servers up to scractch, because as soon as you point to one of the large third party DNS servers this update starts to work. It is actually pretty instant as this is what I needed to do and one second I could not get the update and as soon as I made this change het prestow the update started to work I did not change my time or anythig like that.

I think your CMOS battery ws coincidental.

Thank you for your reply, but as I stated, I had already tried everything else that was suggested in this thread, including changing my DNS settings to the Google IPs.

I ran the iTunes diagnostics and the resulting dialogs indicated that the connection to the firmware update server was unsuccessful due to incorrect date/time settings. I then immediately adjusted the date/time settings on my PC and everything worked perfectly.

I am not suggesting that this is the fix for everyone with similar problems, however it is the fix that worked for me.

My suggestion is to run the iTunes diagnostics and check the resulting data for any obvious error messages. That's what the diagnostics are for.

Jimmy are you on Windoze or Mac?