Can't access broadband

[Guest]

Hi folks – let me be honest up front and say I don’t think this is a
Microsoft problem, but my ISP won’t accept that, so I’m hoping someone can
tell me what to say to the !(£Y*&@@! which will convince them of that... a
few weeks ago, my broadband connection at home started to malfunction. I can
receive e-mails on OE6, and browse SOME websites, but not others.

I can’t connect to Hotmail or (eg) eBay; I can’t SEND e-mails from OE6, or
anywhere else; I can’t FTP (using drag and drop from Windows Explorer to
Internet Explorer); and many other web pages refuse to open.

My ISP is like a broken record, telling me to take it up with Microsoft,
because it’s “definitely†an XP or browser problem. I have demonstrated quite
conclusively this isn’t the case, by using a client’s PC with a fresh XP
build, straight off the CD; by using an old W98 laptop; etc etc etc.

Yet their latest response was to run two fixes from www.sympatico.ca, which
un-register and re-register some browser-related dll’s!

Please, does anybody know what kind of broadband network issue would cause
these symptoms? I've even tried phoning and pretending to be somebody else,
with similar symptoms, and the default reply is again that I have it take it
up with Microsoft, which is ridiculous and quite unfair to you guys.

You’ll be saving somebody (me) from having a stroke here...

Thanks
Roger

 

[Daniel Crichton]

Hogweed wrote on Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:36:01 -0800:

Hi folks – let me be honest up front and say I don’t think this is a
Microsoft problem, but my ISP won’t accept that, so I’m hoping someone can
tell me what to say to the !(£Y*&@@! which will convince them of that... a
few weeks ago, my broadband connection at home started to malfunction. I
can receive e-mails on OE6, and browse SOME websites, but not others.

OK, so that rules out a connection issue as you can access some non-local
servers.

I can’t connect to Hotmail or (eg) eBay; I can’t SEND e-mails from OE6, or
anywhere else; I can’t FTP (using drag and drop from Windows Explorer to
Internet Explorer); and many other web pages refuse to open.

Any error messages? Any messages at all? Did you install IE7?

Have you checked your DNS settings? How are you connected? If using a
router, does it have a DNS proxy, and if so can you try disabling it?

My ISP is like a broken record, telling me to take it up with Microsoft,
because it’s “definitely” an XP or browser problem. I have demonstrated
quite conclusively this isn’t the case, by using a client’s PC with a
fresh XP build, straight off the CD; by using an old W98 laptop; etc etc
etc.

Demonstrated how? Are you saying none of these worked either? How did you
connect them to the broadband?

Yet their latest response was to run two fixes from www.sympatico.ca,
which un-register and re-register some browser-related dll’s!

Please, does anybody know what kind of broadband network issue would cause
these symptoms? I've even tried phoning and pretending to be somebody
else, with similar symptoms, and the default reply is again that I have it
take it up with Microsoft, which is ridiculous and quite unfair to you
guys.

You’ll be saving somebody (me) from having a stroke here...

Thanks
Roger

Given that you can download email and browse some sites, I'd say that the
connection itself is not the problem, and most likely it's a misconfigured
router. But you've given almost no information to go on!

Dan

 

[Daniel Crichton]

Hogweed wrote on Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:40:00 -0800:

OK, thanks for the reply, and sorry for the lack of info. Answers in text:


The only thing is... it varies a little bit. Most days I can access very
little; others a few more sites seem to be accessible. Makes me think it’s
maybe a transmit-level issue on the broadband, but they deny this.

Find an IP address you can ping and get a response. When your connection
isn't working very well, ping it and look at the responses, if it varies
from when it's not bad then it could point to a connection issue.

No, it’s just “Page not Found” or similar, and “Your POP server hasn’t
responded” or whatever on OE6. Yes, I installed IE7 on one of the PCs –
but as I say, the others have variously IE6, IE5, Firefox 1.5, Firefox
2.0. Makes no difference.

OK, so that rules out dodgy plugins for IE7, and the occassional problems
I've seen reported with OE when IE7 is installed (of which I've experienced
non myself). "Your POP server hasn't responded" infers that the DNS lookup
worked, but no response was received - so points to a connection issue.

Unfortunately, that’s all at home, and I’m at work... but it’s just the
default settings. I removed the router, but it didn’t change anything.

When you removed the router, how were you connected? Are you using a router
inline with a modem?

I stuck each of them on the router in turn, and got the same basic
inability to browse most sites, or send e-mail etc. But I could receive
e-mails – even ones with several MB attachments – easily.

Could still be a DNS caching issue on a proxy.

Hope I've clarified a little. Can’t be my router, as I removed it with no
effect. I’m convinced it’s an upstream transmission problem with my ISP...

I need more info about how you removed a router and still had a connection.
It might point to a possible hardware conflict.

Dan

 

[Daniel Crichton]

Hogweed wrote on Tue, 12 Dec 2006 06:18:02 -0800:

Yes, that happens – sometimes I can ping certain sites and get one or two
packets back – sometimes not. Interestingly, my ISP (spit) always start
their response by getting me to ping a URL rather than an IP – usually
www.bbc.co.uk and it responds. However, when I try to ping other sites,
like
www.hotmail.com – or even the ISPs own home address www.blueyonder.co.uk,
they don’t respond. I don’t know enough about WANs to speculate further,
but somebody said they might do this to avoid denial of service attacks or
something... for me, it just makes things more complicated...

Many servers don't respond to pings. For instance, the ones I run don't -
ping packets are blocked at the firewall. Pinging a hostname like
www.bbc.co.uk rather than an IP doesn't make much difference, but I normally
advise not pinging using a hostname as it adds a DNS lookup step which could
be mitigated by a DNS caching/proxy problem. If you have the IP address for
www.bbc.co.uk (when you ping it the address will appear in the results) try
using that instead to avoid that initial DNS lookup.

Also try something like Ping Plotter ( http://www.pingplotter.com/ ), I used
to use this myself to graph anomalies here at work with connection issues,
and once found a regular dropout every 30 seconds that ended up being traced
back to the upstream ISP being misconfigured and causing packets to be
dropped while looking for a connection on an interface that was
disconnected.

It really is pointing to a connection issue, isn’t it.

Not necessarily - could still be a DNS issue, where maybe invalid responses
are coming back. Given that the pings to www.bbc.co.uk work it shows that
the connection from your modem to the ISP router is working. It could
however point to a routing issue further inside your ISP.

It’s an ethernet cable from my network card to the corresponding port on
my cable modem. The modem has been rebooted several times, and the ISP
also claims to have downloaded the latest software to it.

Right, so you have a cable modem and a router in line. Given that you've
taken the router out and you still get problems, it could be down to the
local DNS caches on the machines in conjunction with a failing DNS server at
your ISP. However, given that you got these problems even with a clean
Windows 98 machine (which doesn't have much of a local DNS proxy other than
IE caching addresses itself), I'm not so sure.

Beyond my capacity to understand at present, I’m afraid! Any way I could
test this easily?

With Windows XP, try disabling the DNS Client service. Also check your
router configuration for a DNS Proxy option and disable it - I've had
problems with my own router where the DNS proxy would end up getting
corrupted, or cause the CPU on the router to max out, and make it appear
that there is a connection problem. The DNS Client service on XP can also
make it appear that there is a problem by not correctly switching from
secondary back to primary DNS when there's a failure at the secondary, by
disabling the service you ensure that DNS requests are always sent to the
primary first.

You say when you're having problems that you can download email but not send
it - are your POP3 and SMTP server hostnames the same, or are they
different?

Dan

 

[Baloo]

Please, does anybody know what kind of broadband network issue would cause
these symptoms?

Compromised system? Old install in need of a reinstall? Firewall?

 

[Baloo]

Yes, that happens ? sometimes I can ping certain sites and get one or two
packets back ? sometimes not. Interestingly, my ISP (spit) always start
their response by getting me to ping a URL rather than an IP ? usually
www.bbc.co.uk and it responds. However, when I try to ping other sites,
like www.hotmail.com ? or even the ISPs own home address
www.blueyonder.co.uk, they don?t respond.

www.hotmail.com and www.blueyonder.co.uk both violate the RFCs for TCP/IP
implementation by not responding to ICMP Echo Requests. Traceroute and
ping will always fail against these sites because of this, which
complicates troubleshooting when you're only having problems getting to
sites that are broken by design.

I don?t know enough about WANs
to speculate further, but somebody said they might do this to avoid denial
of service attacks or something... for me, it just makes things more
complicated...

That is often the case, misguided as it may be... instead of making it
harder to troubleshoot and violating the RFCs, they should be allowing or
denying based on IP ranges. IE, if they get attacked, everyone from that
ISP loses out. If big sites handled network abuse this way, odds are the
net would be a safer place for everyone, but these guys don't want to think
that far ahead.

It really is pointing to a connection issue, isn?t it.

I think I saw upthread that when you connect your other computers in the
same manner, they work. Sounds like a Windows problem isolated on one
machine to me.

It?s an ethernet cable from my network card to the corresponding port on
my cable modem. The modem has been rebooted several times, and the ISP
also claims to have downloaded the latest software to it.


Beyond my capacity to understand at present, I?m afraid! Any way I could
test this easily?

I'm not sure I saw anywhere in this thread where a proxy is involved, I
suspect that might have been thrown in as a "blind helping the deaf"
moment.