eircom network core shagged today

Sponge Bob

Well, either their core or some of their main routers.....perhaps both.

Connection to akamai and Bing is the only major route that appears OK. Google and opendns are both borked with severe packet loss and timeouts.

Yes, MS Office 2010 is launched today and the windows update patches came out only yesterday so were there one day when Akamai and MS deserved a break and where the download speeds to eircom needed to look good for the 'state of the internet' report it is today

You may find it best to change back to native eircom dns until they crack the issue.....whatever it is. Most unusual for eircom this, they have some good guys running that core.

Sponge Bob

It is not the core , must be some of their peering with other carriers off the 83.71.. range. Anyway opendns is particularly borked and maybe a change to an internal eircom dns like 159.134.237.6 will get you around it if you find it a nuisance.

mehmeh12

I find it hard to believe than eircom dns servers are better than open dns.. i seem to recall eircom's dns servers being openly hacked a few months ago...

Mr E

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Anyway opendns is particularly borked

That explains some weird speed issues I was having this morning (wildly fluctuating between full speed and sub 30k/s every few minutes).

KeRbDoG

mehmeh12 wrote: »

I find it hard to believe than eircom dns servers are better than open dns.. i seem to recall eircom's dns servers being openly hacked a few months ago...

Don't think anyone stated that Eircoms DNS was any better than OpenDNS (or Google DNS for that matter)

RGDATA!

thanks folks, helpful stuff.
i've been on open dns since the hacking thing last year, and yeah, it does seem borked today.

that's the first time i've ever said "borked" and it feels good.

watty

There are security and performance issues with OpenDNS. Generally if your ISP is properly organised it reduces latency of browsing a lot to use your own ISP's DNS.

OpenDNS should generally only be used temporarily while an ISP's DNS is fixed. Every different server URL needs a DNS lookup. On your own ISP's network with decent broadband this is < 20ms per URL (maybe even < 5ms on some ISPs) . An off local network DNS on public Internet can easily add > 50ms latency per DNS lookup. In extreme cases this can make a web page with mutiple domains/server URLs take longer than browsing via Satellite.

Sponge Bob

An alternative to open dns is the Verizon one, 4.2.2.2

watty

4.2.2.2
Adds 35ms per DNS transaction compared to your own ISP DNS.

I have no idea how many tcp/ip transactions there are for a DNS lookup. Obviously a minimum of one.

Sponge Bob

watty wrote: »

4.2.2.2
Adds 35ms per DNS transaction compared to your own ISP DNS.

It will because it is in the states....but there is no packet loss unlike the as yet unresolved opendns issue. Lots of people only use opendns because eircom tech support told them too last summer when their dns was poisoned

Spear

watty wrote: »

4.2.2.2
Adds 35ms per DNS transaction compared to your own ISP DNS.

I have no idea how many tcp/ip transactions there are for a DNS lookup. Obviously a minimum of one.

Those are legacy DNS systems, kept going as a courtesy for the most part. They should not be considered production systems.

sponge bob wrote:

It will because it is in the states....but there is no packet loss unlike the as yet unresolved opendns issue.

They're multicast, the closest is London.

watty

The latency would be much higher to USA. Extra 35ms for London is typical.

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob wrote: »

(at midday today) maybe a change to an internal eircom dns like 159.134.237.6 will get you around it if you find it a nuisance.

go to http://192.168.1.254/ or better http://192.168.1.254/indexExptCfgRES.htm?confConnRES.htm on a Netopia, "primary dns" should be OK if it reads all zero.

If it reads an open dns address ( generally 208.67.222.22 or 208.67.220.220) instead of 0.0.0.0 and if you have problems then set it to 159.134.237.6 instead

Dardania

watty wrote: »

4.2.2.2
Adds 35ms per DNS transaction compared to your own ISP DNS.

I have no idea how many tcp/ip transactions there are for a DNS lookup. Obviously a minimum of one.

DNS lookups are UDP - zone transfers are TCP so no ack required for simple looked up

I use dyndns internet guide: http://www.dyndns.com/services/dynguide/ - works quite well, and has an element of safety in that it doesn't allow you go to sites reported with viruses etc.

watty

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/12/germany_top_level_domain_glitch/

Hmmm bad day for DNS

PogMoThoin

Eircoms DNS servers have been rock solid since they got hacked. I've been using Opendns on the network with my own pc manually set to use Eircoms and my resolves are alot snappier.

KeRbDoG

Maybe if folks are considering finding a faster DNS provioider, yea could use Namebench - great little tool, tests a bunch of DNS servers to see which ones are quickest with a range of requests

watty

Unless your own ISP is broken it ought to be fastest.

I think for most people that tool is a bit of an overkill.

KeRbDoG

watty wrote: »

Unless your own ISP is broken it ought to be fastest.

I think for most people that tool is a bit of an overkill.

'Most people' wouldn't usually be playing around with their default ISP DNS settings

PogMoThoin

watty wrote: »

Unless your own ISP is broken it ought to be fastest.

Thats the thing, up until they got hacked they didn't work well, timeouts etc, Opendns performed much better. They must have invested in some new gear.

watty

Oddly eircom is now owned by a Telecomms company that also own "Global crossing" fibre company in Ireland. Previously owned by Vulture Capitalist Asset Strippers. I'd guess that makes a difference to fixing "core" needs such as DNS.