Loss of Website access

[lee]

hi all,

come home from work this evening and i can access the idnetters website, and certain other sites. BUT there are a large volume of websites that won't open up such as the BBc site, Dominos Pizza (can't order my dinner). What could cause certain sites to work and others to not?

I use a Macbook Pro intel on tiger, and no settings or alterations have changed. I can't figure it out.

any help appreciated.

Lee

[Rik]

The BBC and Dominos are working fine here, Lee. Unfortunately, I'm not a Mac person so I don't know quite what to suggest. Flushing the DNS cache would be my first step, but I can only tell you how to do that in Windows. Give support a quick ring, they speak Mac. (Can you ping the affected sites?)

[Rik]

Afterthought, Lee. Do you know what MTU values you are using?

[lee]

Hi Rik,

Very sorry for this but idnet asked me to send you a private email with the result of the traceroute for you to forward onto James. It appears I can only access the idnetters site, I can't even send email. Very bizarre, i hope this is ok with yourself.

Lee

[Rik]

It's done, Lee, I've sent across your IP address to make sure they can identify you correctly.

[lee]

Thanks Rik,

I've just turned the router off for a long period and having now turned it back on, I still can't view other sites. Yet this one comes up at super speed, really strange as nothing has changed on my system, no updates or new software.

Tell you what though, how good does it feel when you dial a number and three rings later someone answers and deals with your issue...it's like the saga of Pipex is just some horrible nightmare that happened one cold night after too much cheese before bed.

Lee

[Rik]

It's why I've been with them for two years now, Lee, and I'm just a baby compared to some.

[lee]

So can someone order me my dinner please!!! 

[Rik]

I could try, but whether it would reach me or you is debatable.

Are you seeing a specific error message, eg does it stick at Looking up and then timeout? Have you checked your MTU settings?

It might be worth trying OpenDNS to eliminate another possibility: 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220

What happens if you try to access directly, http://212.50.189.169/?

[Sebby]

I was just going to say, the first thing to try is DNS, in case there's some weirdness in that respect. OpenDNS, as above, is a good bet.

[lee]

It's all sorted...the wonders of IDNET.

You won't believe the cause either!

I posted on here last week regarding some micro filters for my father in law who has just bought a new pc laptop and wanted to access the wonders of the internet. Needless to say I set him up with IDNET and
we.......wait for it gave him our other router. He then tried to connect the router before he spoke to me and the server saw two connections from different locations with the same IP address and so had a giddy fit. As soon as the very nice Miriam dumped the IP address, our connection came straight back.

We now have our original IP address and I'm now on the other line trying to talk my father in law through configuring the router with their new settings while he is no longer connected to the telephone socket.

Thanks to Rik for being an absolute star and also to Miriam for her patience and humour.

And I got my PIZZA!!!!

[Rik]

That's weird but great news, Lee, not somewhere I'd have thought of looking - but something that IDNet can, of course, see. 

What pizza did you go for?

[Sebby]

Glad you got it sorted, Lee. The thought of Dominos is making me hungry, and I've only just eaten!

[Ted]

I have seen reports from people saying that they have taken their router to other peoples houses to test, and it has logged on with their original details. Even though its clearly a different line and IP address.
Very strange!
Also IIRC it has to be the same ISP. Still strange!!

[Rik]

I think that, if the ISP is the same, it should work, Ted. AFAIK, the verification process is about username/password and the ISP accepting that, I don't think the phone number is involved directly, just whether the correct ISP is providing service on that line - but that could be totally wrong, of course.

[Steve]

An ISP places a "tag" on a line whatever that means

[Rik]

It's a sort of 'ownership' marker, Steve, a sign to BT that no-one else can access the line for ADSL.

[Sebby]

I'm imagining going into the telephone exchange and seeing those little brown tags tied to each line with the ISP's name handwritten on it.

[Rik]

I think they use a Dymo machine, Seb.

[Steve]

I assumed it was tagged to a range of IP addresses?

[Rik]

AFAIK, Steve, the line is just tagged to an ISP. Those that use dynamic addressing would have problems otherwise.

[Steve]

Even so Rik but an ISP using dynamic IP addresses must surely have an allotted pool?? If I go to a speedtest site they know which ISP I am coming through or do they work it from some other data?

[Rik]

They can determine your ISP from the allocated address ranges, Steve, the phone line is not a factor. In theory, I could go to another IDNet customer on dsl4, and login from there, provided that my own router wasn't connected. As I understand the process, BT 'looks' at the login name after the @ and sends the login to the ISP, provided that tallies with the line setup. The ISP looks at that, checks the username and if there's a match, then asks for the password to complete the connection. If the line was only set up for gw5, it wouldn't accept my dsl4 login, but I could switch and use my gw5 login. On my own line, I can use either.

[Sebby]

I think they use a Dymo machine, Seb.

Ah, more high-tech than I pictured.