'Net Connection Weirdness

[Astro_Bot]

Like most people, over the years, I've had the occasional internet interruption: a carrier dropout (ADSL or cable); a gateway or DNS server failure (no sites reachable); or, an upstream link/router/routing failure (only some sites unreachable). These are usually resolved quickly and the failure symptoms are fairly clear.

The last few days, however, I've had some weird symptoms that I've not seen before. My current ISP is Bigpond cable and I've had intermittent connection to some or all sites at various times since (I think) Monday.


DNS timeouts about 50% of the time (though this particular error seems to have resolved now)
At times, perpetual "waiting for ..." problems
At times, all sites very slow to load
At times, all sites unreachable
At times, some sites uneachable (except Google was always reachable when that happened)


Speed tests showed no loss of speed/traffic but excessively long ping times (~450ms).

My router (which also runs security software) reported some "packet loss" on the ISP side for a while, but not completely in sync with observed problems.

With today's issue (for a few minutes, nothing was reachable on the web at all, but Gmail still worked) my router reported that every web site had a "read-only file system" and refused connection. I've never seen that before!

I bypassed the security software briefly and connection problems persisted - besides, it's professional-grade (Sophos UTM, a.k.a Astaro SG) and I've been using it for years without problems.

Naturally, the Bigpond status site shows no faults (do they ever acknowledge faults?) and the Philipines-based support staff are none the wiser (why did I bother?).

So, after all that ...

Has anyone else had problems (over the last few days)?

Thanks for looking.

[Larryp]

Hi RG
I have Bigpond ADSL and have experienced excessively long "waiting for" instances, with some of them unable to connect at all.
Wednesday night I could not load any photos from IIS-could just see thumbnails.
Very slow loading of sites happened to me, too.
Everything seems ok now, so I figured it was a problem with Bigpond
Cheers

[mithrandir]

I noticed a couple of slowdowns loading images off IIS links a day or two back and not through BigPond. I've been getting the standard 1.5MB/sec from AARNET so it's not my link.

[tlgerdes]

There has been a widespread DDoS attack that is choking the internet for the last week. The attack was focused on a company SpamHaus, an email cleaner. That attack was focused on creating congestion at a number of interconnect points around the world.

"While there have been no direct reports of this attack having a direct impact on Australian Internet users, Akamai Technologies foresees home users experiencing slower Internet or receive unwanted emails as part of the attack."

http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/457557/spamhaus_attack_highlights_fragilit y_internet_iia/?utm_medium=newsletter&eid=-217&utm_source=security

[Astro_Bot]

Thanks for the replies.

I've been following the SpamHaus DDos thing with interest, but I don't think the symptoms I've seen line up with that attack, especially since it started on March 18th and I didn't have any problems before April 1st. There's a fair bit of online analysis suggesting that the impact isn't that much on ordinary users, plus it should have affected everyone in the country given the nature of the attack.

I did find this thread on Whirlpool, though, that talks about recent packet loss on Bigpond Cable in my geographic area (Brisbane, especially eastern suburbs):

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2078823

[pluto]

Astro_bot have you tried using a different DNS? I'm certainly no expert, but these sound like DNS issues to me?
I haven't noticed any performance issues and I'm on an iinet DNS: 203.2.75.132
Might be worth a try...?

[tlgerdes]

You're sure your on an IINet DNS???? 203.2.75.132 is Optus DNS

[pluto]

Ha! yeah you're right, I've just had that address memorised for years and always use it because it's always been reliable. It definitely was iinet back when I first used it! :D

[mithrandir]

I run my own DNS server on Linux. That protects me from most of the DNS attacks by caching responses.

[brian nordstrom]

:mad2: Hi Astro Bot , I recieved an email from BigPond ( my supplier up her in the NT ) at 12pm on 29th of march to tell me I had only 2gb of data useage left , cool .

And at 12pm on the 29th of march I also recieved an email from Bigpond saying my 4gb of usage has been used up ??? , your internet has been slowed ,, , whew 2 gb used in 60 seconds ? .
I was in bed at the time and looked into the slowed up service ? on saturday . Usueless !

It aint only you mate , the whole system is suspect :shrug:.
I spent 1.1/2 hours in the local Telstra shop on tuesday after work , and it took 24 hours for them to sort it out !!! Zero explanations :mad2: .

The money they take from me is alright though ? .:sadeyes: .they dont miss a thing when it comes to billing us ?

Brian.

[Astro_Bot]

I run a caching DNS forwarder on FreeBSD - not quite a BIND server but it does for me. The default cache timeout is fairly short, though, so it doesn't help with timeout problems on "new" sites, i.e. anything I haven't looked up in the (I think) last few minutes.

Edit: I have 100GB allowance that I barely use a quarter of. Anyway, that doesn't explain the symptoms.

It's been good the last few hours ... maybe it's fixed?

[mithrandir]

Over the last few hours I have been having issues connecting to US sites. M$ download servers in particular. The DNS lookup is OK. It's making the connection that's not working - "Problem loading page. Site is taking too long to respond.

[TrevorW]

Over the last week Optus DNS has been dropping out and then coming back up spasmodically. Support reckoned I had a dicky telephone cable, after swapping cables etc it worked fine.

I think it was more a case of disconnecting all cables from phone sockets and the router that may have fixed the problem than anything wrong with the cable.

Also Optus have a recorded message on their support line about floods etc affecting service

[Astro_Bot]

Three days have passed without issue, so it seems to be fixed.

A bad cable segment, mux/demux or similar might have explained most of the symptoms (intermittent packet loss, slow connections and timeouts). But why did Google and Gmail always remain available, unless every time I tested those (about 20-odd times) I just happened to catch a good period? Unlikely, but possible.

Anyway, it's fixed; it wasn't my equipment; and, I'm happy again (as much as anyone can be with Telstra).

Thanks, everyone, for the advice and support.