Having an extremely weird problem accessing Drupal.org, looking for input

Posted by GripMediaDOTNet on May 7, 2009 at 10:11pm

Howdy:

I have an very intermittent and strange problem. From my static IP at my office, intermittently without warning, I cannot access drupal.org or any related sites, while anybody else can as long as it's not my IP. From my same office, if I log onto a free WIFI, I can access the site on the same computer.

I call Comcast and they are about as helpful as my Cat. (FWIW, my cat is old skool, she's a fortran developer and too lazy to learn the web ways).

What I suspect is happening is that the Drupal server for some reason see's my IP as bad, or attacking and locks me out for a period of time. I have had other servers not like my IP. Why I dunno. I can assure you I am not running any scams, bot-nets, etc. :)

Anybody know whom I can contact at Drupal.org to see about whitelisting my IP?

It's really hard to deal with because it is so intermittent, though it seems to happen if I stay on the Drupal site for more then a few minutes.

Gotta get this worked out, being a Drupal developer and all.

I am on Mac OS X 10.5.6, G5

Comments

Traceroute?

Posted by eljustino on May 7, 2009 at 11:10pm

Next time it happens, try running a traceroute to drupal.org. Could be some sort of upstream routing issue between you and the Drupal servers.

Personal: http://www.justingolfs.com
Nerdly: http://www.nerdliness.com

Personal: http://www.justinstanley.net
Nerdly: http://www.nerdliness.com

I've had the same problem

Posted by bejames on May 8, 2009 at 1:48am

I have some trace route screen captures somewhere. They showed that the route screwed up just before drupal.org. From memory the route failed at the router with "nero" in its name.

If anyone at drupal.org is interested I can post traceroute captures.

For me the problem "just went away" too.

Same problem here

Posted by gmasky on May 8, 2009 at 8:41am

I live in Bombay and face the same problem. While using one of my internet service providers I just cannot connect to drupal.org or any other drupal domain. However while using the same machine with another ISP I am able to connect and make this post.

I also have this problem with http://onecare.live.com

What OS? What browser? Clear the DNS Cache.

Posted by Peter-gdo on May 9, 2009 at 3:26am

There is an OS that is know to have this type of issue, as it runs
several DNS caches for applications. You would need to clear the
DNS caches. Some OS's do this by simply stopping the service.
Others you need to flush the file the cache is stored in.

Traceroutes

Posted by nnewton on May 8, 2009 at 3:58pm

Traceroutes would be appreciated as well as your static IP. That sounds like your ISP screwing up, but you might also be on a blacklist and I can check that.

Will post the traceroute, others please do the same

Posted by GripMediaDOTNet on May 11, 2009 at 10:32pm

Thanks for the feedback. Next time it happens I will post a traceroute.

As far as cache, I have cleared the cache multiple ways.

I am OS X 10.5.6 G5. Safari and Firefox

When this happens, I ping drupal.org and 0 packets get transmitted.

I flush the DNS cache from command line does not help.

My static IP is: 173.8.217.202

Flush then dump cache? Dump FF's cache?

Posted by Peter-gdo on May 11, 2009 at 11:58pm

Before flushing the OS X DNS cache dump it, to see a positive result.
Flush the DNS cache. Dump the cache again to see the positive result
is no longer present. I've seen some cache flushing fail, likely due to
additional commands needed (Stop the service to clear the RAM cache,
flush again, start the service, flush again - with dumps to be sure.).

Install FF plugin that clears FF's DNS cache. Yes, more than one
cache on the computer is now getting common.

Though the ping is pretty telling. The traceroute "now" of it working
would be good, to compare against the bad one.

Traceroute command has an option to start the route from a remote
IP number. Anyone can do it, including you, if you ssh to a remote
machine, or use a web service, like dnsstuff.com use to offer.

Here is my working trace route:

Posted by GripMediaDOTNet on May 13, 2009 at 6:45pm

from:

my static 173.8.217.202

2 ge-3-1-ur01.hollywood.or.bverton.comcast.net (68.85.242.181) 10.344 ms 7.708 ms 7.691 ms
3 te-9-3-ar01.beaverton.or.bverton.comcast.net (68.87.216.33) 11.677 ms 7.876 ms 9.953 ms
4 te-0-4-0-0-cr01.portland.or.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.90.241) 13.485 ms 11.595 ms 9.799 ms
5 pos-0-0-0-0-cr01.seattle.wa.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.205) 19.294 ms 14.842 ms 15.383 ms
6 te-3-2.car1.Seattle1.Level3.net (4.79.104.105) 15.594 ms 13.075 ms 13.769 ms
7 ge-10-0.hsa2.Seattle1.Level3.net (4.68.105.7) 13.911 ms 15.698 ms 14.114 ms
8 UNIVERSITY.edge5.Seattle1.Level3.net (63.211.200.246) 19.182 ms 17.759 ms 17.723 ms
9 corv-car1-gw.nero.net (207.98.64.177) 19.049 ms 19.866 ms 25.158 ms

Is that complete to drupal.org?

Posted by Peter-gdo on May 13, 2009 at 10:18pm

Here is the bottom half of my tracert (From Los Angeles) (HIH)

14 48 ms 47 ms 47 ms scrmca2wcx1-pos9-0.wcg.net [64.200.240.114]
15 54 ms 55 ms 55 ms eugnor1wce1-pos3-0.wcg.net [64.200.210.2]
16 60 ms 61 ms 61 ms eugnor1wce1-univ-of-oregon.wcg.net [64.200.134.198]
17 62 ms 62 ms 64 ms corv-car1-gw.nero.net [207.98.64.18]
18 60 ms 62 ms 59 ms master.drupal.org [140.211.166.6]

Trace complete.

It appears my traceroute got one further. So, that is your "working" traceroute, or not working?

And from a colo in downtown LA

14 te-4-4-70.sntcca1wch010.wcg.Level3.net (4.68.110.26) 10.412 ms 10.180 ms 10.149 ms
15 GigE-15-0.sntcca1wcx1.wcg.Level3.net (64.200.249.141) 11.389 ms 10.779 ms 10.609 ms
16 scrmca2wcx1-pos9-0.wcg.net (64.200.240.114) 13.582 ms 14.304 ms 13.766 ms
17 eugnor1wce1-pos3-0.wcg.net (64.200.210.2) 22.846 ms 22.826 ms 23.186 ms
18 eugnor1wce1-univ-of-oregon.wcg.net (64.200.134.198) 32.569 ms 32.481 ms 32.412 ms
19 corv-car1-gw.nero.net (207.98.64.18) 32.571 ms 32.667 ms 32.696 ms
20 * * *
21 * * *
...
30 * * *
Cntl-C

Eeks!

I now see why Drupal.org is so slow for me. (not shown in traceroute:) Level3
has me going to San Jose, back to LA, back to San Jose.
Geesh... someone ought to tell them.

That's the working traceroute...

Posted by GripMediaDOTNet on May 13, 2009 at 11:02pm

19 corv-car1-gw.nero.net (207.98.64.18) 32.571 ms 32.667 ms 32.696 ms is the server at Oregon State

of course, just like a car at the mechanic's shop, Drupal has not stalled on me yet to do the traceroute when it is not responding.

You sure .18 is not a gateway (gw)?

Posted by Peter-gdo on May 13, 2009 at 11:50pm

BTW, always do "many" traceroutes, as it can change from minute to minute.
BGP can do that over the backbones. Just doing one traceroute will never
be enough/adequate, in my experience. So, do some more, and compare
them. Keep them all on hand, particularly if they differ. Why? When it's
down, your traceroute might match the first one, or one of the later ones,
or none of them. Good to know as it indicates vastly different problems
with vastly different solutions and who to contact to fix it.

master.drupal.org has an IP of 140.211.166.6, and hosts the domain name drupal.org.

While corv-car1-gw.nero.net (207.98.64.18) is part of Nero, a backbone provider,
where the 3LD has the initials gw, which typically means gateway, or a computer
that is dedicated to connecting a WAN to a LAN.

BTW, I'm never looked into how drupal.org is hosted, but my guess it's
in a data center, not on campus. Why? 207.* vs 140.* means there
is not a campus gateway, that typically would have an IP starting with 140,
so DNS delegation would work best, as well as BGP routing, without
special effort on the part of the sys admins.

This type of info would be good to know when troubleshooting.

With the traceroute, when it goes down, you will be able to tell
"where" it is down. Is it at the gateway? The server?
Is a firewall blocking you? Which one?

Good luck.

Problem still happening and is making me crazy

Posted by GripMediaDOTNet on July 10, 2009 at 1:44am

Very difficult to be a Drupal developer when I can't use my own internet in our office to access Drupal.org:

here is latest traceroute. Who can help me or who can I contact to get my IP un-blacklisted... Thanks!

traceroute to drupal.org (140.211.166.6), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 * * *
2 ge-3-1-ur01.hollywood.or.bverton.comcast.net (68.85.242.181) 12.510 ms 6.864 ms 9.337 ms
3 te-9-3-ar01.beaverton.or.bverton.comcast.net (68.87.216.33) 11.544 ms 9.494 ms 10.573 ms
4 te-0-4-0-0-cr01.portland.or.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.90.241) 28.193 ms 10.367 ms 11.997 ms
5 pos-0-0-0-0-cr01.seattle.wa.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.205) 15.381 ms 19.524 ms 16.248 ms
6 te-3-2.car1.Seattle1.Level3.net (4.79.104.105) 12.906 ms 14.274 ms 16.365 ms
7 ge-10-0.hsa2.Seattle1.Level3.net (4.68.105.7) 27.809 ms 13.846 ms 14.118 ms
8 UNIVERSITY.edge5.Seattle1.Level3.net (63.211.200.246) 20.654 ms 21.142 ms 20.038 ms
9 corv-car1-gw.nero.net (207.98.64.177) 18.556 ms 23.752 ms 20.053 ms
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
15 * * *

RE: Your problem

Posted by nnewton on July 10, 2009 at 3:11am

Please ping 140.211.166.6 and 140.211.166.61 and paste the results here. Specifically if you can get to .61 and not .6.

Thanks!

I was having similar issues

Posted by bonobo on July 10, 2009 at 5:23am

See http://drupal.org/node/504252#comment-1766996 and follow the thread on down (my d.o username is bonobo)

The way I "fixed" it: I cycled my cable modem and my router.

FWIW, I also experienced these problems on a Comcast line.

Cheers,

Bill

FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education

FunnyMonkey

Cycling

Posted by GripMediaDOTNet on July 10, 2009 at 9:48pm

this sadly only works for about 3-5 minutes and then it's back to not connecting...

done this 5 times in a row. I am at wit's end.

Bill, same thing, it's comcast.

How are things at the Monkey?

Thanks for your help.

jerry

How many devices connect via this access point?

Posted by bonobo on July 10, 2009 at 11:26pm

Hello, Jerry,

How many devices connect via this access point? I noticed what appeared to be a connection between connecting to the intarwebs via my iPhone and losing the ability to connect to the drupal.org -- because cycling the router seemed to solve it for me, I didn't put any additional time into exploring this potential connection in any rigorous way, so it's likely a red herring, but I figured I'd throw it out there anyways.

RE things at the Monkey -- swinging from vines and neck deep in mischief; aka, the usual :)