Access blocked at CA data center??

[kotapress]

So this is completely weird:

We are in WA State and can see and access email for our sites and all our clients.

But clients in Pennsylvania cannot see their own site, email, nor anything we have on our acct with PZ! They tested from three different locations there, and all get stopped at a data center in California. Their IT guy tried to re-route around it, but still nothing. This is the case for:

kotapress.com
wgfpa.org
mekosun.com
hennahealing.com

It all looks fine from here in WA state -- though our stats did stop tracking for everything on May 11th for all of us. But otherwise, out here we are able to access sites and email. But back east in PA they are getting nada!

Anyone have any ideas? Jim, do we need to reset something with DNS since the Sacremento server move the other day? I'll put thru a help ticket, too.

Thanks,
k-

[cmyksteve]

Hi K-

I can get to all four of those sites, from northwest Ohio. Here's a screen shot, running traceroute from my Mac at home (Embarq is my isp) to kotapress.com.

No solutions here, just wanted to let you know the problem is probably closer to your customer.

[kotapress]

Thanks, Steve! Appreciate your time and energy! We seem to have other people all over the US, too, who can definitely see the sites. But the building WGF is in -- and downtown Pittsburgh in general -- seem to be having difficulty. In this one building, the IT guy checked thru 30 different companies and they all died at the following trace route:

rossman@dissolved ~ $ traceroute 8.9.24.64

traceroute to SouthBend-64.pgzn.com (8.9.24.64), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets

1 v249.cs1.810par.pitbpa.e-xpedient.com (209.166.168.2) 0.336 ms 0.242 ms 0.221 ms

2 g0-1-0-440.car1.acm.pitbpa.e-xpedient.com (206.210.75.248) 1.373 ms 1.311 ms 1.268 ms

3 v200.cr1.halle.clevoh.e-xpedient.com (66.181.79.41) 6.109 ms 5.901 ms 6.103 ms

4 ge-6-23-102.car2.Cleveland1.Level3.net (4.78.59.13) 6.775 ms 6.477 ms 6.557 ms

5 ae-6-6.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.69.132.202) 25.566 ms 17.778 ms 18.057 ms

6 ge-9-2.hsa1.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.68.101.166) 16.341 ms ge-9-0.hsa1.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.68.101.38) 16.298 ms ge-9-1.hsa1.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.68.101.102) 16.378 ms

7 WILTEL-INTE.hsa1.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.79.77.38) 243.467 ms 287.623 ms 252.227 ms

8 10.10.90.2 (10.10.90.2) 35.420 ms 35.382 ms 34.975 ms

9 *


He said about 40% of the time, he can eventually get someone thru to seeing the sites. But no one has been able to get email at all for over two days now. So?? He also said it seems to be a hang up at the handshake that should happen between Wiltel and Level 3.

I posted this also to my help ticket. Any addition feedback or ideas are much appreciated. Thanks!
k-

[kotapress]

anyone? even if someone there at PZ could just tell me this problem is not yours and explain why there is no fix from this end? at least that's something I could pass forward to client. tomorrow they will come in to their 3rd full day without access to their site, without access to their email -- they can't get to cpanel to do horde mail even. What do I tell them?

thanks...k-

[edwurster]

Originally Posted by kotapress

He said about 40% of the time, he can eventually get someone thru to seeing the sites. But no one has been able to get email at all for over two days now. So?? He also said it seems to be a hang up at the handshake that should happen between Wiltel and Level 3.

Your web site is up from NJ. The statement in quotes is confusing. Does it mean that his trace has 40% fails, or what? Do they all go thru a proxy? Same ISP for each site of the client?

Did the problem coincide with the server move?

Here's another wild guess. That particular router may have a bad route in it.

[cmyksteve]

It's hard to tell if this is relevant, but the server status page isn't connecting to SouthBend-64 (11:03 am EDT), but I'm able to browse the KotaPress.com site.

[kotapress]

Thanks, Steve & Ed. Yes, all the companies in that building are using the same ISP. He said that about 40% of the time, even though the trace fails 100% of time, he can get clients thru on browser before "time out" to see and browse one of the sites, but cannot get them connected to email at all. And the WGF offices have never been able to get thru to cpanel at all.

So maybe it is a server move? Maybe it is a bad router?

Whatever it is, we have just lost this client for hosting. They are looking for a host who can guarantee that from their own offices, they'll be able to see their own website and access their own email. Probably their ISP will be a solution for them.

In the meantime, it leaves us looking like idiots. Even though the ISP can offer no solution to this problem either, they can offer the alternative to host them and guarantee they can see their site/email. Though this problem does not appear to be our fault -- server is up, email is collecting on the mail server -- because I can give no solution and get no answer from PZ, we become the ones who failed, etc.

So, at least this forces them to make the jump to a new host. Once we get all our clients switched to new hosts, then we can consider options for our own sites, I guess. Makes me sad. Been with PZ for years and years now. Always appreciated that there were human beings like Jim there on the other end. And can't imagine we'll find another like it.

But to "resell" hosting as a business thru PZ now seems totally not viable. Unless I'm willing for my business to end up looking like the "ones who fail" in these situations because it takes days to resolve and there are no clear answers about the process, etc.

Anyway... sorry, just venting. Thanks for listening. Thanks for time/energy you've given as other PZ users to try and grasp for answers.

Miracles,
k-

[edwurster]

Originally Posted by kotapress

Thanks, Steve & Ed. Yes, all the companies in that building are using the same ISP. He said that about 40% of the time, even though the trace fails 100% of time, he can get clients thru on browser before "time out" to see and browse one of the sites, but cannot get them connected to email at all. And the WGF offices have never been able to get thru to cpanel at all.

This is unusual. Given that, it doesn't surprise me that the ISP can provide hosting with no problems. I'm sorry to hear this, but the only thing you could have done was move the site to another host.

[midwest]

The blocakge is at an internal 10.10.x.x router at level 3, the main router seems to be having trouble, 250+ ms is way too long so its probably not getting much at all to the 110.90.2 router. The problem most likely lies somewhere with level 3 as it looks like the packets are getting bounced around chicago on hop6 trying to get into the box at hop 7 which appears not to want to cooperate(250+ms).

The ISP is misleading your customer. If the blockage is at level3/WILTEL more Internet users than just your ISP are not able to view your sites. The only thing your ISP can guarantee your client is that THE CLIENT will be able to see his own site unless the ISP's webserver crashes. Your client would be able to see his site even if the ISP's outside line was hit with a hatchet. But in that situation the clients site would be dead to the rest of the world. But your client and employees would still be able to send emails to each other saying WTF, why is no one emailing us?!? That makes your (prior) client like an ostrich, head in the sand;out of sight, out of mind.

BTW: Someone or more than one someones at that ISP must have their head up their butts if they dont know how and who to contact to get the problem fixed.

.

[kotapress]

Thanks, MidWest, appreciate your confirmations! We have been saying this all week to them -- both client and ISP -- that from our end servers are up, email is there gathering, I can see it, etc. But, yes, the ISP has represented it in a way that is misleading.

I did finally call a national help line of that ISP, to see if I could get another point of view. They again told me, "those websites are down and no one can see them anywhere." I sorta flipped my lid at that point and outright called him a liar and told all of us have been able to see everything fine all week. All he could say then was, "I don't know what to say." arg.

Anyway, I did get him to tell me that there was a request on their end for the engineers to "assign a new port to Cisco 35" -- well, hello??!! Why didn't one of them tell us that on freaking Tuesday instead of driving us all insane all week?!

So we'll see if they resolve it this weekend. I haven't gotten the new hosting/ftp info from the client yet, so maybe as the truth is being revealed here, they will change their decision. I don't know yet.

Again, really appreciate time/energy from you MidWest, Ed, and Steve to help me out with it this week! Thanks...

miracles,
k-

[edwurster]

How about a hint as to the ISP's name?

[Jim]

Originally Posted by kotapress

So this is completely weird:

We are in WA State and can see and access email for our sites and all our clients.

But clients in Pennsylvania cannot see their own site, email, nor anything we have on our acct with PZ! They tested from three different locations there, and all get stopped at a data center in California. Their IT guy tried to re-route around it, but still nothing. This is the case for:

kotapress.com
wgfpa.org
mekosun.com
hennahealing.com

It all looks fine from here in WA state -- though our stats did stop tracking for everything on May 11th for all of us. But otherwise, out here we are able to access sites and email. But back east in PA they are getting nada!

Anyone have any ideas? Jim, do we need to reset something with DNS since the Sacremento server move the other day? I'll put thru a help ticket, too.

Thanks,
k-

When I ping hennahealing.com I get 8.9.24.64 which isn't connected any servers in CA, or the one brought online for those sites (8.9.24.84). I will check it out fully right now though.

[edwurster]

dnsstuff has too many ads and limits these days.

Any chance we could get something like Traceroute, Ping, Domain Name Server (DNS) Lookup, WHOIS, and DNS Records Lookup ???

In particular, the express button is useful. You get a trace, whois and dns lookup with one click.