I can’t log on to the SDMB from home. (I’m posting from work.)
When I try, my computer says that “The server is not responding”
I’ve contacted my ISP, Intermedia At Home (cable modem) & they haven’t gotten back to me yet. I sent to the Webmaster here, but I can’t tell if the e-Mail got through.
Routing? Cookie problem? What???
HELP!!! I NEED MY SDMB ON THE WEEKENDS!!!
I’m going into withdrawl now.
Temporary server capacity problem, most likely. We’ve had a few of those over the past few days.
I have also been unable to log in to http://www.straightdope.com since Thursday from home.
Duck Duck Goose is having the same trouble ( I found this out at Opal’s Message Board).
I’m using a Cable Modem and connecting via RoadRunner from Cincinnati, Ohio. I am able to connect to all other websites from home without a problem. I had not changed any hardware or software configurations prior to or after the problem began.
Apparently we’ve found the problem. Is everybody who’s unable to connect using @home? I also can’t connect, and I’m using comcast.
I ran traceroutes through the cable and through dialup, and the results are below. Is everybody else who has trouble timing out at the same machine as I am (190.ATM9-0-0.GW1.CHI6.ALTER.NET [146.188.208.77])? I notice from the dialup I go through a different machine (191.ATM8-0-0.GW1.CHI6.ALTER.NET [146.188.208.65])
Granted I’m not on the Reader’s IT staff, but I’m about 99.5% certain it’s not a server capacity problem. I can sign on consistently via dialup, aol, work, etc. Everything except my cable provider. I consistently cannot reach the network through the cable. Obviously not all cable customers have the problem, but is there anybody having the problem NOT using cable?
Through dialup:
Through my @home service:
Sometimes you can access the pages using IP addresses when you can’t access them via the URL:
Straight Dope IP addresses
Main Page 65.201.198.8
Message Board 65.201.198.9
Just type them in just like you would a URL.
Joe_Cool, it’s very well possible that you have a problem because of some fluke with your ISP. And we certainly can’t rule out the fact that that may be the case for others, too.
All I can state with certainty is that we do have capacity problems on our servers that sometimes affect us all at the same time. But in your case, a call to your ISP may be in order.
I didn’t say there’s no capacity problem. That there IS one is kind of a no brainer. What I said was that this particular problem is not a problem with capacity. Or DNS, since I’m getting successful lookups to the right address.
techchick, It appears to be a routing problem. I’m getting routed to a dead-end. It looks almost like a chunk of @home is (accidentally?) getting black-holed somewhere in Chicago.
Any of the rest of you guys who can’t connect normally, what results do you get? Is your last hop before *** the same as mine (190.ATM9-0-0.GW1.CHI6.ALTER.NET 146.188.208.77), or something different?
if you don’t know how, here’s the command in unix:
traceroute boards.straightdope.com
and in windows:
tracert boards.straightdope.com
You can also substitute 65.201.198.9 for boards.straightdope.com, as Techchick kindly pointed out.
Well, I’m using @home, and I haven’t had a single problem connecting, except at usual peak hours.
Just thought I’d had my 2 bits.
And I find it impossible to get on the SD site at any time whatsoever.
<HAL>I don’t think this is a capacity problem, Dave.</HAL>
From home, I mean.
Joe_Cool has hit the nail on the head. I’m getting blocked at the same point. I use a cable modem at home (RoadRunner). I have not got on even once since Thursday so I think it is a router problem / accidental Blocked IP thing rather than a server capacity problem (although there is a server capacity problem too).
With a server capacity problem, I would expect to be able to get on at least occasionally (esp. during off hours) and get timeouts the rest of the time. This is NOT what is happening. During the same periods, I can access the site from work but not from home.
Here are the results of my ping tests link to a picture of a plotted ping test
I’m getting blocked at EXACTLY the same spot as Joe_Cool.
Your beef is with your ISP as well, then, right?
It would be nice if you reported back here with the results - others might be able to solve their problems easier that way. Thanks!
It COULD be with my ISP (which I’ll have to check on when I can call them from home). However, as multiple ISPs have been blocked all at the same time (Thursday Night), it is most likely on the other end. Either Straight Dopes ISP, or something goofy in between (See the key router mentioned by Joe_Cool). My guess is that someone decided to make some changes to their firewall (either to block a set of addresses or close a port) and this was an inadvertent side affect.
My husband is an uber techie guy who does this kind of thing and that was his opinion. I’m a slightly less uber techie and I had the same hunch.
I honestly don’t think it is my ISP but I’ll definitly call them and report back. The thing that makes me doubt it the most is that several people with several different ISPs are getting blocked at the exact same point from and from the exact same time (Thursday). Perhaps we can multi task and have someone there check to see if 190.ATM9-0-0.GW1.CHI6.ALTER.NET [146.188.208.77] is part of the Straight Dope’s Domain.
Well, we’ll see, later today…
No! IT STILL DON’T WORK!!! ARRRGGGGGH!!
Well, I’m a loser and didn’t get in touch with my ISP last night. I’ll post the information when I get around to contacting them.
“Joe_Cool, it’s very well possible that you have a problem because of some fluke with your ISP.”
No, really???
Thanks for your valuable input, handy.
I’m sure you’ve got the solution to everyones problems available as well. So I won’t stand in your way: you have the stage.
To those who are having this problem:
What are your IP addresses (you obviously don’t need to give the whole thing, for privacy reasons…the first three octets will do)? I’m curious whether we’re all on a similar IP range that could be killed by a single firewall setting.
I’ll start:
I’m at 65.8.64.xxx
Joe_Cool, it very well might help to see a pattern to the IP addresses.
Here’s what I’ve found out. I’m in the Dallas area on a DSL line. The final router before the Chicago Reader itself is the same one the Joe_Cool fails on (146.188.208.77), yet mind works fine, so I doubt it’s a router problem.
ISP’s have no control of the packets once they are passed to a backbone except that they may have some ability to help figure out what is wrong. These traces are dying at the very end of UUNET’s backbone. (router names that end in ALTER.NET are part of UUNET’s network. The part just before that tells the city or location, (CHI6=Chicago, NYC9=NY City, etc.) So, I doubt it’s an ISP problem directly.
I’ve gone to a site that allows you to run traceroutes from their servers and ran several traceroutes from various places. They all worked fine.
I ran traces from the areas that people have reported problems, Joe_Cool connects to UUNET at NYC, tevya connects at Washington DC, Bosda is in Tennesee, DDG is in Indiana, there is someone here in the DFW area that can’t get through. By using these other servers, all the routes seem to work from all over. There seems to be a few routers on the last hop before connecting to the Chicago Reader (146.188.208.77, 146.188.208.73, 146.188.208.69, and 146.188.208.65.) I’ve seen all these show up on good traces.
So, what have I figured out? Very little. One thing is the the return path isn’t necessarily the same as the forward path, which is what you see on the traceroute. That means there could be a bad routing table that is sending the acknowledgements off in the dust instead of the request. That’s not very likely though.
The real curious thing I did notice, (you just knew I was getting around to something, didn’t you?) is that some of the traceroute sites gave a TTL value along with other info about the trace. TTL means Time To Live. It is suppose to be decremented by one for each router that the packet passes throught. When the TTL value gets to zero the packet is discarded. The traceroute sites start with a TTL of 255, but the curious thing is that although TTL might be 248 right before the Straight Dope’s router (65.201.198.1), but it returns a TTL=55. The Straight Dope server (65.201.198.9) returns TTL=246. That would mean that the 65.201.198.1 router decremented the TTL count by 193 instead of 1. That just doesn’t seem right.
I don’t know the significance of that and whether it would effect some services and not others, but it may be something for the techs to look into.
Jim
