Salon - - Huge swaths of the internet down for me

Doug Nelson · #1 02-20-2008, 12:22 PM

Experiencing some random oddness, which will likely fix itself, but it's strange enough that I thought I'd share.

Last night all was fine. This morning I sat down to start my e-day and found I can't visit many of my favorite sites. Other sites I can visit fine, but can't get RSS feeds from them. I can browse to boingboing, but can't access their RSS feed. I can't reach dslreports.com at all. But most sites (such as this one) come up fine.

I didn't install anything in the interim, didn't even reboot or powerdown/up. I thought it might be my ISP having DNS problems, so I tried the OpenDNS servers, but they were no different. Firefox has the same problem as IE.

Anyone else experiencing this today?

Gary Richardson · #2 02-20-2008, 12:25 PM

Just accessed http://www.dslreports.com/ no problems at all.

Jerryb · #3 02-20-2008, 02:18 PM

hi,
it hard to say whatthe issue is.... I assume your doing your antivirus and antispyware scans to eliminate those possibilities....

what you might to try to troubleshoot in order to find out if the issue is with your pc/modem or your isp or beyound or servers and net just plain busy...... is use your ping and tracert commands.....
for example i did a ping on dslreports and there indications there problem... ie: packet losse's and also slightly large delay times on there end...!!
and on boingboing... at least when i tried they were looking good no packet loses and delay times good...

if you don't know how to use tracert and ping commands....
1. either run them from your command or from you comd prompt....
2. the systex; example
ping yahoo.com
tracert yahoo.com
3. the ping is just s imple round trip check and also give any losses of packets....
4. tracert give you the routing and also delays times.... to distination... you normally want to see below 100ms delay.. 200ms and above.... things are going to be real slow.... if not problems reaching...!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

Experiencing some random oddness, which will likely fix itself, but it's strange enough that I thought I'd share.

Last night all was fine. This morning I sat down to start my e-day and found I can't visit many of my favorite sites. Other sites I can visit fine, but can't get RSS feeds from them. I can browse to boingboing, but can't access their RSS feed. I can't reach dslreports.com at all. But most sites (such as this one) come up fine.

I didn't install anything in the interim, didn't even reboot or powerdown/up. I thought it might be my ISP having DNS problems, so I tried the OpenDNS servers, but they were no different. Firefox has the same problem as IE.

Anyone else experiencing this today?

Frank Lopes · #4 02-20-2008, 05:18 PM

I have experienced the same thing and in every case, it were DNS issues that caused my problems. Either at the ISP or higher up in the DNS tree.

The only way to "debug" the problem is to use the IP address instead of the name.

There was a period that these problems were so common, that I created my own DNS lookup table for all my favorites.

Since then, no more issues.

Off course, if the site that I want to go to decides to change their IP address, it will cause me a headache...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

Experiencing some random oddness, which will likely fix itself, but it's strange enough that I thought I'd share.
...
I didn't install anything in the interim, didn't even reboot or powerdown/up. I thought it might be my ISP having DNS problems, so I tried the OpenDNS servers, but they were no different. Firefox has the same problem as IE.

Anyone else experiencing this today?

Doug Nelson · #5 02-20-2008, 05:27 PM

Pings and tracerts both timed out, and numeric IPs had no effect.

But, as I expected, it self-corrected. And now that I can reach dslreports I can see all the complaint posts starting from people with my same ISP having the same problem.

Thanks for the ideas, though.

Kraellin · #6 02-20-2008, 10:41 PM

there have been numerous large storms throughout the U.S over the last couple of weeks, including large ice storms in the mid-west and multiple tornados in the south. many places have suffered power and phone outtages. i was without power for a while, myself. in my area the reports were about 21,000 people were without power for a while. in the south, with the tornados, i'm not sure how many lost power and phone.

this can and does affect the internet at times, especially if a hub goes down or suffers massive outages around it. in some areas, phones and power are still out with another storm system moving in.

i can reach most of my favorite sites but one or two seem to be suffering intermittent lags and outtages. bear in mind that as phone and power are restored this sometimes results in more losses for a short time (lines sometimes have to be removed and then replaced, etc.).

because these storms, the ice and tornados, were quite severe, i'd expect more lags here and there, finally tapering off if no more severe weather knocks stuff out. in our area we had massive branches of trees breaking under the weight of the ice and sometimes landing on power and phone lines (mine were both hit, though i didnt lose phone).

and whereas major hubs and even smaller ones are using smarter routers and so on these days, a major hit on and around one of these hubs can still cause problems. and if the area hit is around mae west or mae east (the HUGE DNS lookup servers), things can get pretty bad, though it hasnt happened that way in quite a while.

pings and tracerts are you best bet in isolating what's going on, or, if you have one of those fancy software programs for tracing ips, that would be even better. tracerts can be especially good since they can isolate where the traffic is bogged down more readily.

rondon · #7 02-21-2008, 02:38 PM

Maybe your ISP was moving it's satelite out of the way

plugsnpixels · #8 02-23-2008, 01:51 AM

I thought the internet was built to withstand a nuclear strike–and that was in the '60s! ;-) But true, they may not have considered how FAST it would be afterwards...

Jerryb · #9 02-23-2008, 08:59 AM

hi doug,
I am glad to see your problem fixed it self or rather it may have been your isp fix it..

I don't know how much you know about tracert, but one thing I have done... is recorded what numbers i should see with certain sites, at certain time of the day, when things are good!! .... this give me an baseline to reference when thing are bad and help me determine where the problem is located for example...
I know if i see bad times, if the first relay point listed is goodand when going thru the next 5 or 6 relay points are bad and the rest are good, .. I know that it my isp servers and then i can jump on my isp to fix it....!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

Pings and tracerts both timed out, and numeric IPs had no effect.

But, as I expected, it self-corrected. And now that I can reach dslreports I can see all the complaint posts starting from people with my same ISP having the same problem.

Thanks for the ideas, though.