HELP!!! ISP Connection w/ DVDTalk
 

Before I go bitching to my ISP, I was hoping some of you could confirm or lead me in a better direction on this.

Right around the time DVDTalk switched to Speedhost for its host I stopped receiving my emails for subscribed threads. That has continued and now when I try to log on from home I rarely can get the site to come up. I constantly get the "Can't connect to the server...try again later...maybe the server is down" message from Netscape when I try to log on. Usually after a few hours if I reconnect to my ISP and try again I can get on. All the other internet sites I visit work fine. Also, last night I switched my email address to my work address to see if I would get my emails for subscribed threads. Low and behold when I came into work this morning those emails were waiting for me.

So my question is, would it be possible that for some reason my ISP has trouble connecting with this site and only this site b/c it moved to speedhost? How would I try to get this resolved with my ISP? I've contacted Geoff about the email problem and he hasn't responded (he already has plenty to do), so I was hoping to get this resolved w/o having to bug him. Thanks!

One technique I find useful when I'm having connection trouble is to do a traceroute. If you open a DOS window and type "tracert www.dvdtalk.com" you'll see the path, number of hops, and timings between you and DVD Talk.

When I have trouble getting server response I usually find a link between DVD Talk and me is having intermittent problems. If you don't know how to interpret what you get from your traceroute cut and paste it here so we can look at it.

I've moved this to the Feedback Forum so other members can comment on your ISP if they know anything particular to Speedhost.

I'll give the traceroute thing a try tonight. To clarify, my ISP is not Speedhost, from what Geoff posted here awhile ago, I beleive that is who is hosting this website now. It was when that change was made that my problems began. I use Cometlink. If there is an intermittent problem is it something my ISP can work on or am I screwed? Also, that shouldn't prevent me from getting the emails should it?

Oh yeah. I've got to start reading better! :)

Update:

So I called my ISP and asked them about the problem. They had no answers. The guy told me that he couldn't get the site to come up either so it couldn't be their problem. WTF??? I asked why that would affect the email. Again, no clue. I wouldn't let him off the phone so he put me on hold and came back to say they found a problem with the email and they would have it fixed in five minutes. I thought he just said that to get me off the phone. I waited about 20 minutes logged on, tried to get to this site and nothing! So I did a tracert and it came back bouncing back and forth between 64.14.225.5 and office-router.southchicago.net.

So I called back to tell them this. I told this guy I think the other guy just said the email thing to get me off the phone. He actually came back and said it was true! Anyway, he said that 64.14.225.5 was them and the router is obviously theirs too. He had no clue, but said he would put a work order in. I asked them to send an email if they solve anything.

This is so damn frustrating. I just want to be able to enjoy this site from home! I had no problems until a few weeks ago and now I'm lucky to get on this site by midnight each night. I'm at a loss. Is it my ISP's fault or a combination of my ISP and this site? What else can I do? I just wish I knew why this was happening!

Since we haven't been getting a lot of complaints about this, I'm going to have to blame this on your ISP. At least it sounds like they're working on it now.

Hope they get to it soon.

Good luck.

I would still really like to see your traceroute. I don't understand what you mean by bouncing back and forth either.

While I really don't know what a traceroute shows, my assumption was it shows all the servers I hit or hop to connect to a particular site. My traceroute first "hop" was to 64.14.225.5 then the next "hop" was to office-router.southchicago.net than back to 64.14.225.5 and back to office-router.southchicago.net.

It continued "hopping" back and forth between those two and for the maximum 30 hops and never connected to dvdtalk.com.

I've left out the times b/c I didn't think that was the issue. Since I'm new to this tracert thing, if there is some pertinent piece of info I'm leaving out let me know.

You aren't connecting through your company's network are you? Do you do VPN or any online type work with your company from home?

Nope, I have no problems connecting to the site when I'm at work. My home computer is strictly for checking email and a little web surfing.

This is the point I tried to get through to the idiots at my ISP. I connect to this site no problem connected to any other ISP, whether it be work or my friends, but I connect to it about 1 out of 10 times through my ISP.

It sure looks like your ISP's problem in routing to a particular IP or range of IPs.

If they're bouncing the traffic back and forth between those two routers they've got something messed up in their routing tables. I would think they could pinpoint that fairly quickly and easily since you have told them the details.

If they can't handle it, time to get a new provider.

Any suggestions? I use my computer at home on a limited basis, so I don't want to pay for something I won't use. I don't want to deal with those free services either. Right now, I pay $9.95 a month for unlimited access. I'm willing to pay a little more, but not much.

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you.

Perhaps post this question in the Computer Forum and someone will have an answer.

It would really be a lot more helpful in diagnosing if you could copy and paste here the entire output of your traceroute.

Well, I'm having the same problem at home since this past Tuesday. I can't seem to connect to DVDTalk.com with my Optimum Online connection here in NJ. I also can't load www.paypal.com. I'll do a traceroute and post results here tonight.

Would surfing through one of those bypass firewall websites work? I forgot the URLs of some of those websites.

I'm going to bitch at my ISP again today sometime, but if they don't fix anything I will try to post the whole traceroute. The problem is that it takes up more than a full screen. Is there a way I can scroll back up in DOS window? I haven't been able to.

You can always do tracert www.dvdtalk.com >a (you can use any name you want)

This will dump the dialogue into the text file a

Here's mine:

TraceRoute www.dvdtalk.com (216.167.93.69)
timed out
1 8 8 10.151.0.1
2 11 3 167.206.252.209
3 13 2 167.206.12.116
4 16 3 167.206.12.100
5 17 1 167.206.12.2
6 16 -1 198.180.44.101
7 17 1 165.117.48.33
8 23 6 165.117.48.118
9 21 -2 129.250.9.149
10 21 0 129.250.4.186
11 22 1 129.250.17.54
12 52 30 216.167.88.108
13 20 -32 216.167.88.133
14 * * timed out

I sent the following email but it doesn't look like I'll be getting any help:

Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 19:31:56 -0800 (PST)
From: "DGC" <[email protected]> | Block Address | Add to Address Book
Subject: Please Help - Can't Connect to DVDTALK.COM
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Hi,

My route to the www.dvdtalk.com website attempts to
pass through the IP 208.167.88.108 and 216.167.88.133
which appear to be on the verio network but have no
DNS record. As a result, I am unable to load the
dvdtalk.com site to my browser.

I'm trying to resolve this issue but have reached a
dead end since it is out of the hands of my ISP -
Optimum Online (failure occurs at the 13th hop, See
attached trace route).

Please help if you can.

Thank you.

David

Hello, anybody??? or am I sh^t out of luck???

[*sound of crickets*]

Is this website's IP address static or does it change depending on where you are connecting from?

Looking at dcg's trace route it shows a different IP address for this site than mine does. Mine shows the sites IP as 157.238.137.205.

I show the same ip address as you. not sure what the othe ip address dgc has.

ok I tried going to the ip address thatdgc has and i just get a dns error. Ours pulls up dvdtalk.

I'll bet that 216 address is an old one. Looks like the DNS server hasn't been updated. I'd suggest finding another DNS server.

I can open IP 157.238.137.205 but any subsequent hyperlinks I use on the dvdtalk.com homepage end up in a "Cannot find server or DNS Error". It's like my connection refuses to route that way.

I'm still at a loss at what i should do. HELP!!!! I want my dvdtalk from home!!!!

You can't get to any subsequent links because they all rely on DNS resolution. The page links don't use IPs.

You have to find some new DNS servers. A starting point would be your finding out how to specify what DNS servers you use. Is it specified in your cable modem and you use DHCP on your PC to get the values? You could try talking to your ISP's tech support and tell them you want to use different DNS servers, how can you enter their IPs? There are DNS servers that people here could give you the IP to, but you have to know how to be able to get your system to use them.

Thanks X, I'll try contacting my ISP tonight to see how I can use different DNS servers.