Anyone Else Having Internet Connection Issues?

[dugdeep]

I'm having some very odd internet connection issues and was just wondering if it's unique to me or not. I seem to be able to access the forum without any issue, but no other sites I try will load (including SOTT.net). Anyone else having similar problems? Seems weird that only the forum would continue to work, but I couldn't have chosen a better site to maintain access to!

 

[Foxx]

I'm having some very odd internet connection issues and was just wondering if it's unique to me or not. I seem to be able to access the forum without any issue, but no other sites I try will load (including SOTT.net). Anyone else having similar problems? Seems weird that only the forum would continue to work, but I couldn't have chosen a better site to maintain access to!

Maybe you're having DNS (host name resolving to one or more IP addresses, if you're not familiar) problems and the forum's IP address happens to be cached on your computer. You could try pinging different sites and see if you get an IP address for them and ping responses.

Alternatively, sometimes the internet is just wonky :)

 

[dugdeep]

I'm having some very odd internet connection issues and was just wondering if it's unique to me or not. I seem to be able to access the forum without any issue, but no other sites I try will load (including SOTT.net). Anyone else having similar problems? Seems weird that only the forum would continue to work, but I couldn't have chosen a better site to maintain access to!

Maybe you're having DNS (host name resolving to one or more IP addresses, if you're not familiar) problems and the forum's IP address happens to be cached on your computer. You could try pinging different sites and see if you get an IP address for them and ping responses.

Alternatively, sometimes the internet is just wonky :)

Unfortunately, you're talking a little over my head, here. I think I'll contact my ISP to see what's up.

 

[Foxx]

Unfortunately, you're talking a little over my head, here. I think I'll contact my ISP to see what's up.

Ah, sorry. DNS stands for Domain Name System--so when you try to connect to a website by typing in the name (ie: www.sott.net), your computer contacts a server (another computer) to map that name to some numbers (an IP address) that your computer can then connect to. Your computer will often keep a copy of those requests and responses for a period of time, so a break in the DNS system on your end (like not being able to connect to the DNS server for some reason) might make it so that your computer can't translate the names of sites to the IP addresses that it needs to be able to connect to those sites. But if you visit the forum often, you might have a copy of that IP address stored on your computer, so the specific breakage isn't apparent when you're trying to connect to the forum.

"Pinging" is a command that's run in a terminal/command line (cmd.exe in windows) to translate the DNS name to an IP address and try to connect with it in a very simple way to see if the website is up and whether your computer can connect to it.

In any case, it's probably an ISP problem if you haven't made any changes to your computer's networking setup, so a call to them is probably the way to go.

 

[dugdeep]

Unfortunately, you're talking a little over my head, here. I think I'll contact my ISP to see what's up.

Ah, sorry. DNS stands for Domain Name System--so when you try to connect to a website by typing in the name (ie: www.sott.net), your computer contacts a server (another computer) to map that name to some numbers (an IP address) that your computer can then connect to. Your computer will often keep a copy of those requests and responses for a period of time, so a break in the DNS system on your end (like not being able to connect to the DNS server for some reason) might make it so that your computer can't translate the names of sites to the IP addresses that it needs to be able to connect to those sites. But if you visit the forum often, you might have a copy of that IP address stored on your computer, so the specific breakage isn't apparent when you're trying to connect to the forum.

"Pinging" is a command that's run in a terminal/command line (cmd.exe in windows) to translate the DNS name to an IP address and try to connect with it in a very simple way to see if the website is up and whether your computer can connect to it.

In any case, it's probably an ISP problem if you haven't made any changes to your computer's networking setup, so a call to them is probably the way to go.

Thanks Foxx. I've determined through FB (FB app on my phone still works) that it is indeed my ISP that's the issue (20 minutes on hold made me suspicious too!). Apparently I can fix the problem by changing my DNS to google (8.8.8.8, I believe), but I have no idea how to do this. Where do I change that (using Windows 7)?

Any help appreciated :)

 

[Foxx]

Thanks Foxx. I've determined through FB (FB app on my phone still works) that it is indeed my ISP that's the issue (20 minutes on hold made me suspicious too!). Apparently I can fix the problem by changing my DNS to google (8.8.8.8, I believe), but I have no idea how to do this. Where do I change that (using Windows 7)?

Any help appreciated :)

I personally would probably just wait until the ISP fixed the DNS problem (if that's definitely the issue and it's on their end, then it's a serious problem and they're probably working on it now), but if you'd prefer you can change your DNS settings by following these instructions (you're probably using IPv4):

_https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using

Example: Changing DNS server settings on Microsoft Windows 7

Go the Control Panel.
Click Network and Internet, then Network and Sharing Center, and click Change adapter settings.
Select the connection for which you want to configure Google Public DNS. For example:
To change the settings for an Ethernet connection, right-click Local Area Connection, and click Properties.
To change the settings for a wireless connection, right-click Wireless Network Connection, and click Properties.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Select the Networking tab. Under This connection uses the following items, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) or Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) and then click Properties.
Click Advanced and select the DNS tab. If there are any DNS server IP addresses listed there, write them down for future reference, and remove them from this window.
Click OK.
Select Use the following DNS server addresses. If there are any IP addresses listed in the Preferred DNS server or Alternate DNS server, write them down for future reference.
Replace those addresses with the IP addresses of the Google DNS servers:
For IPv4: 8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4.
For IPv6: 2001:4860:4860::8888 and/or 2001:4860:4860::8844
Restart the connection you selected in step 3.
Test that your setup is working correctly; see Testing your new settings below.
Repeat the procedure for additional network connections you want to change.

The only testing you should probably need to do is going to a website that didn't work before.

Also, another thing that might work is to reboot--I'd suggest taking these instructions down first in notepad or something because rebooting could clear your DNS cache of the forum's IP address, so then you won't be able to connect here to get them.

Good luck :)

 

[dugdeep]

It worked! Thanks a million, Foxx!

 

[Foxx]

It worked! Thanks a million, Foxx!

Great! I'm glad you got it all sorted out.

 

[panca kanga]

I thought I would choose this thread...
From about 18.00 yesterday, 1st April till sometime after 6.00 today 2nd April, I was getting name-server errors saying there was no such site as cassiopaea.org. I had good internet connectivity otherwise. I am in the UK btw. I wondered if anybody else noticed a problem yesterday evening? I did not have opportunity to try to trace the problem further and it was cleared before I could look into it.

 

[EmeraldHope]

I thought I would choose this thread...
From about 18.00 yesterday, 1st April till sometime after 6.00 today 2nd April, I was getting name-server errors saying there was no such site as cassiopaea.org. I had good internet connectivity otherwise. I am in the UK btw. I wondered if anybody else noticed a problem yesterday evening? I did not have opportunity to try to trace the problem further and it was cleared before I could look into it.

Ditto. I could get on through my phone but not my computer from Sunday night through Monday night. Many ping tests failed also. I also got the DNS and name server errors.

 

[Vulcan59]

There was some upgrading to the servers over the last few days. Should be back to normal now. :)

 

[thorbiorn]

For the past week, I have had difficulties accessing the Cass site. Today I tried tried _mytunnelsite and got through. I also switched off the firewall but that was no use. Then I downloaded and tried various programs, but the only one that worked was Freegate. It can be downloaded from cnet or _http://dongtaiwang.com/loc/phome.php?v=7.39&l=809&tvp=9000. The program come with a lot of bundled addons. To avoid those one needs to choose custom install and then go through the installing process careful checking and unchecking as the case requires. To avoid Freegate initiation IE and showing their homepage one has to check an option in the settings.

The official clients of Freegate are according to _ http://dongtaiwang.com/do/Qa_k/ootLfAa.AYxLm3/about_us: The Epoch Times, RFA and VOA. The first was apparently originally inspired by the Falun Gong movement: _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times The latter two by the US Government.

 

[Sirius]

Could it be also related to some DDoS defence the cass server has in use? So that a certain IP spectrum is being excluded from service if too many request come in? That's what I noticed: That too many subsequent requests will be at one point ignored and the connection cut off as a means of protection.

 

[panca kanga]

Could it be also related to some DDoS defence the cass server has in use? So that a certain IP spectrum is being excluded from service if too many request come in? That's what I noticed: That too many subsequent requests will be at one point ignored and the connection cut off as a means of protection.

What I saw was that the cass site address was not being recognised by the nameservers I was using. Would this be an effect of what you are describing? I would expect (but I don't know) that in the case of a DDoS attack (or defence) the connection would fail but not the address lookups. Is that the case?... OK, I've just looked some comments up on the net...Of course if the attack is aimed at the nameserver then legitimate queries will hang and time-out.
But is there really any other evidence, or other reason to suspect that a DDoS attack had been mounted?


Anyway I would not expect to see nameserver errors just as a result of doing things to reconfigure the servers but Vulcan59 would know if it was an expected risk or not and s/he sounds pretty cool about it:
[quote author=Vulcan59]There was some upgrading of the servers over the last few days. Should be back to normal now.[/quote]
Perhaps it was just something done by the ISP or whoever has authority for the addresses? 12 hours would once of been a reasonable length of time to wait for name-server configuration changes (mistakes) to propagate through the net, maybe it still is.