BeThere - Some sites failing

[Lucio]

Hi guys, got a strange problem here and looking for some advice on how to proceed. Our broadband connection is failing to reach a small range of sites that we were previously able to access.

Our ISP is BeThere and they're claiming that there's no faults on their network and that from our gateway, they're able to load the sites in question.

Our internal network is configured so the router/modem is plugged straight into the network switches and all PC's are configured to go directly to it for their internet connection, with a backup gateway being our SBS server.


Anyone have any ideas or tests I could run to try and pin down the problem as the affected sites are ones that we need to access and we're running low on bandwidth on our backup 3G modem.

[divvydave]

I'm at work on a leased line and I can normally remote desktop to my home PC on bethere, but today it's timing out. I also cannot access their forums from here. The sales portal seems to be ok though...

let me know how you get on.

[LuckyNV]

my MSN won't log in

some sites are a bit slow to finish loading, but otherwise fine here.

[divvydave]

Can now remote onto my home BeThere connected PC. Done some tests on my usual sites and it's a tiny bit slower but loading them up

[Jay]

Lucio have you tried a different DNS server?

[Nerval]

Was a nationwide problem with O2/Be according to the TB forum - I had it too - but it seems to be fixed now.

[Blitzen]

I had it aswell.
Things like my CC company and BBC football where timing out.

[watercooled]

Sounds like a routing/DNS problem - anyone narrowed it down? Trying a different DNS server as Jay suggested should show which.

[Lucio]

I've tried three different DNS servers, Be's own servers, OpenDNS (our usual one) and Google DNS, all the same results.

What's odd, is I can get a successful nslookup for each of the affected sites, but both pings and tracerts fail. Nor can I load the sites via their IP address. I've confirmed I've got the correct IP address results back via an outside source as well.


The only thing in common is all the destination sites share the same first part of their IP address as we do, the 78.xxx.xxx.xxx range, but they're all hosted by different providers.


Be's technicians continue to insist that things are fine from their end and I'm half inclined to believe them but this problem persists even when we switch back to our original equipment.

[watercooled]

Ahhh. Right, there was one IP range recently opened up which was previously non-routable over the Internet, it may well have been 78 but I'll double-check in a minute. The websites may have been allocated these IP addresses and the routing tables in the Be network may be slow at updating. It definitely sounds like a routing issue in their network though, whatever their customer services say.

[Lucio]

Well, curiouser and curiouser, got someone else to run a traceroute for me to the affected sites, backtracked to find the point where I could connect and found that I can't connect to any stage after a 78.xxx.xxx.xxx range

[watercooled]

What's an example website/IP?

[Lucio]

One example is http://www.wfh.naturalengland.org.uk/ tbh that's the one that flagged this up as a definite problem as the others were sites of other people in the industry who may have potentially blocked us.

[kalniel]

One example is http://www.wfh.naturalengland.org.uk/ tbh that's the one that flagged this up as a definite problem as the others were sites of other people in the industry who may have potentially blocked us.

It's working for me on O2 (which is BeThere)

[watercooled]

I had a very strange issue a while ago which I still haven't figured out - I was trying to download CCC from AMD's website but it wasn't working for me. Out of interest, I asked a friend to check it who said it was fine, so I tried accessing it through a tor-type system which didn't work. But when I logged on to my friend's wifi with the same computer it worked fine. No idea what could have caused that!

[Lucio]

It's working for me on O2 (which is BeThere)

Thanks, could you check your assigned IP and see if it's starts with 78.xxx.xxx.xxx? TBH, part of me thinks this is an issue solely with our line, or only affecting a handful of people on our exchange. It's such a specific but partial error I can't see how it'd be system. Not to mention that the sites worked previously and stopped working in the last couple of weeks.