Someone please tell me about "INTERNET WEATHER REPORTS"

[The Gorn]

I have a strange situation here:

Google responds fine.

So does this site, computerconsultantsforum.com.

My own resume and product web site is inaccessible.

So is my POP3 server from my email client.

SSH to my VPS fails. But SSH to nearlyfreespeech.net, the web host for this site, works fine.

A variety of web sites time out with no response: crazyontap.com, joelonsoftware.com, weatherunderground.com, nytimes.com. But many sites DO respond, like cincinnati.com (news), and others.

If I SSH to my nearlyfreespeech.net site and I use "lynx", I can browse all of the sites that are apparently blocked to my home location.

My wife can get on Facebook but not Farmville (both are my bane, but what are yah gonna do...  )

I have no idea where my ISP (CenturyLink DSL) would have a network status page.

Are there any web sites that would show, for example, that CenturyLink is having problems getting out to 80% of the public intertubes?

But the problem is clearly not with my setup, right?

[The Original Henry]

Tracert the dead links. I have CenturyTel too and they are notorious for having black holes in their network. Every other month I'm having to chase them down and explain to them that their routers are configured incorrectly. Exact same symptoms - some sites good others nothing. It just depends if the path to the target machine passes through their black hole as to whether or not you can reach it.

[The Gorn]

I was about to correct you and say "CenturyLINK" but it appears that this cartel is an all absorbing octopus and it's the same ISP.

So I get this (it stalled here after 10 minutes or so):


C:\Windows\System32>tracert nytimes.com

Tracing route to nytimes.com [199.239.136.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    18 ms    18 ms    18 ms  oh-74-5-48-1.dhcp.embarqhsd.net [74.5.48.1]
  2    19 ms    19 ms    19 ms  oh-67-76-204-77.dyn.embarqhsd.net [67.76.204.77]

  3    31 ms    31 ms    30 ms  host.lightcore.net [208.110.248.205]
  4    31 ms    31 ms    31 ms  bb-chcgilwu-jx9-02-ae0.core.centurytel.net [206.
51.69.70]
  5    32 ms    70 ms  1012 ms  207.88.184.205.ptr.us.xo.net [207.88.184.205]
  6    31 ms    31 ms    31 ms  207.88.84.213.ptr.us.xo.net [207.88.84.213]
  7    32 ms    31 ms    32 ms  te-4-2-0.rar3.chicago-il.us.xo.net [207.88.12.13
7]
  8    32 ms    32 ms    32 ms  ae0d1.cir1.chicago2-il.us.xo.net [207.88.13.5]
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13     *

[The Original Henry]

CenturyTel is the company name. They changed their branding to CenturyLink after they bought Embarq earlier this year. Now they're taking over Qwest to become an even bigger problem. They're an awful company and I have nothing good to say about them, so I'll just leave it at that.

From your tracert it looks like the dead link is with XO and not CenturyTel. Whether that's good or bad I can't say, but I'm not sure there is anything you can do about it other than wait for them to correct it on their own.

[DarkHumour]

I recall having issues with any email attachment over 1k.  They either failed to send or receive on my pop client.  Something bizarro was going on.  This was in the early days of broadband cable who did not encourage the use of routers using NAT.

Eventually discovered that the ISP changed (lowered) their MTU setting.  Once I diagnosed that problem using ping, discovered the correct MTU, and setting it in my router, the problem went away.

The MTU was probably a non issue if you were using a pc directly connected to their modem. 

DarkHumour

[The Gorn]

CenturyTel is the company name. They changed their branding to CenturyLink after they bought Embarq earlier this year. Now they're taking over Qwest to become an even bigger problem. They're an awful company and I have nothing good to say about them, so I'll just leave it at that.

In my area: United Telephone --> Sprint --> Embarq --> CenturyLink

A meaningless churn of corporate identities.

From your tracert it looks like the dead link is with XO and not CenturyTel. Whether that's good or bad I can't say, but I'm not sure there is anything you can do about it other than wait for them to correct it on their own.

Well, from our location it appeared that about 2/3 of teh intertubez was inaccessible. I figured that it was some broad geographic disruption of traffic and actually didn't have much to do with CenturyCrap.

[JavaMouse]

If twitter search is available to you, try that:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=centurylink

roccocapra: Just home from work. A moron cut a CenturyLink Fiber that took out most of OH. Had to rig braodband with laptop to ship parts to Honda >:\ 
about 9 hours ago via web 

And you thought twitter was useless!

[datagirl]

I'm with JavaMouse on this.

CenturyLink hi-speed customer support is 800-809-1410.

I just called it and there is an announcement that DSL customers in OHIO are SOL (I paraphrase).
There are most assuredly some redundant fiber routes that get overloaded quickly.  Those routes on your side of the cut will be accessible, those beyond are not.

The good news is that the repair will be a priority since it affects a lot of customers.

Where I live is an infrastructure peninsula.  We know pretty quickly whenever there is an issue that cuts us off.

Regards,
-DG

[The Gorn]

Hey, that's pretty good! Thanks. (It straightened itself out by about 1 AM last night.)

[Richardk]

Good to hear things got resolved.

Other than areas being overloaded or totally cut-off, isn't robustness one of the great things about the Internet? Traffic should get rerouted or somehow find it's way to the destination? It seems that some are primary routes and if that gets cut, there is no rerouting.