Problem accessing certain sites /w EircomBB

Zenith74

Every now and then (has happened a few times in the last week or two) I seem to lose access to most sites in other parts of the world with EircomBB. I can get onto the likes of Google.ie and a few other sites but pretty much all sites outside Ireland don't work? By the next day the problem usually seems to be sorted. At the moment the site I mainly can't get onto is www.motorcycling-ireland.com, it works some time and not others, however friends of mine on dialup and IrishBB can get onto the site at the same time as I can't. When I ping it I get an IP address but full packet loss.

Just wondering if anybody else has had this problem and found a solution?


Thanks very much,
Philip

Clover

on eircom bb myself and have not noticed any problems , i'v tried your link and it will not open for me either.

paddy

try your address again with http://www.motorcycling-ireland.com/
instead of http://www.motorcycling-ireland.com,/

Dasilva94

When the comma is taken out of the original link it works on Eircom broadband

Zenith74

Oops, yeah I obviously meant that site without the comma . It still isn't working for me now even though plenty (most) of other sites are. I can ping it and get an IP address but just get request timed out... Another site I just tried to get to was www.christies.com and am getting the exact same thing! But like I said it's not just that site, every couple of days I'll lose connectivity to most US sites I usually visit.

I have three PCs connected to a hub, then a Netopia DSL router connected to the hub as well. Same problem from all the PCs...

Any ideas? Just want to eliminate anything obvious before phoning Eircom...

Thanks again,
Philip

crowbar

try running a traceroute, eg.:

C:/> tracert www.motorcycling-ireland.com

and seeing whether you get anywhere. normally you will get a list of all the routers that you pass through in order to get to a web site. if you get stars on the first line, then it's probably a local problem with your setup, but if it fails after a few lines then it's likely that the problem lies on eircom's network.

note: this doesn't work for all sites as traceroute packets may be arbitrarily blocked by firewalls on the internet, though it does work to motorcycling-ireland from here.

Zenith74

I've just set my brwser up to use the Trinity College proxy server and I can now get onto all those sites. I can also get onto them no problem through www.megaproxy.com. I can't find an Eircom proxy server (and shouldn't really need to use one anyway IMO) so I'm gonna give them a call now and see what the story is...

Here's the trace -
\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1>tracert www.motorcycling-ireland.com

Tracing route to www.motorcycling-ireland.com [12.129.198.133]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 21 ms 19 ms 19 ms 83-70-32-1.bas2.prp.dublin.eircom.net [83.70.32.1]
3 18 ms 19 ms 19 ms fe0-1.edge1.prp.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.225]
4 117 ms 117 ms 116 ms pos1-0-0.core1.hud.newyork.eircom.net [159.134.191.110]
5 * * 12.118.100.5 reports: Destination net unreachable.

Trace complete.

crowbar

hmmm. 12.118.100.5 is within at&t worldnet network in the us. it sounds like a routing problem within at&t or between at&t and eircom's point of presence in new york. good luck, don't let eircom fob you off - tell them you have a traceroute to prove that there is a routing problem!

Zenith74

I just called Eircom there. Apparently they have a dodgy IP pool beginning with 83.* which is having problems with AT&T as you said. He said there are only a few hundred 83.* addresses out of 250,000+ so chances of me getting another one was unlikely so he suggested restarting the router. I did and got the same address again, restarted again and got another 83.* address. At a guess I'd say I've been getting these for the last week seems as that's how long I've had the problem. My peer/gateway address is always 83.70.32.1 but I can't see anyway of changing that on the router . I rang them back but was told to ring back in an hour or two (easy for them to say when they're not paying 74c per minute for a call to solve THEIR problem)... Anyway thanks for the help crowbar...


Philip

Zenith74

Right well I was just on to them again, they are working on sorting it out but it could be a few days, apparently a good few people are having the problem and restarting the router doesn't sort it out... Could anybody with Eircom give me the Peer/Gateway Server address their router is using (one that doesn't begin with 83. ) to use for the next few days?

Thanks,
Philip

crowbar

unfortunately you can't just change your gateway like that, the gateway is dependent on the network segment that you're connected to. to get a different ip address (which is hopefully on a different subnet) you could try and turn off your modem/router for an hour or several, then turn it back on in the hope that someone else has taken your old address and the network gives you a different one. my router disconnects from the dsl line after a few hours' idle time, and seems to change ip addresses almost every time it connects.

Zenith74

Oh right, gotcha! I'll leave it off tonight and see if I get a different one in the morning, if I do I just won't switch it off again for a few days ...

Thanks again...