StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I was hoping to get some suggestions from some of the more network-minded folks.

For the last week or so, I've been unable to get to the board from any of my home machines (ISP is Comcast). I can get on from work, and I can get on from some Joe Blow proxy at home.

I was hoping Comcast's DNS servers were just borked, but I have tried using a few others and I still cannot reach the board. I can get to any of www.stardestroyer.net, but none of bbs....

Any ideas would be appreciated.

I think this has happened before. It may be worth noting that bbs.stardestroyer.net and www.stardestroyer.net are actually on two different networks, despite sharing the same domain name.

Interesting. I wish I were clever enough about these things to use that information.

I haven't noticed anything at my end, and I'm using Comcast at home. Perhaps it's just a regional specific thing?

Howedar wrote: I was hoping Comcast's DNS servers were just borked, but I have tried using a few others and I still cannot reach the board. I can get to any of www.stardestroyer.net, but none of bbs....

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Have you tried flushing your DNS cache? It could be that even though you're trying to use different DNS servers, you've still got a bad entry in your cache for the SDN BBS server.

I'm assuming you're using a recent version of Windows; ipconfig /flushdns will do it.

I had a very similar problem a few weeks back, and could only access bbs.stardestroyer.net via going through a proxy server (it didn't matter which one, so long as it wasn't a Comcast connection in the same general area). www.stardestroyer.net was unaffected, as was pretty much every other site I went to. tracert revealed that one of the hops on the way here was getting stopped, and Comcast was somehow not routing around it (the same Level3 server kept getting returned with timeouts). Calls to Comcast gave only a "it's not our problem" response each time, and I put up with it for over a week before it cleared up on its own.

So, try a tracert on bbs.stardestroyer.net and see if there are any points where the connection just dies. Then, try connecting to a proxy somewhere else in the world and going through that.

Try browsing to the to forum by IP (http://206.210.96.180). If you can't reach the forums that way it isn't a DNS problem.

Going directly to the IP address doesn't help. The connection, in fact, seems to die at the router. I need to go to work right now, but I'm going to powercycle the router when I get home.

Frustratingly, neither router fiddling nor time have improved the situation.

Have you tried contacting your ISP's support people to ask if they know what this is?

I had this problem a few months ago. I tried every suggestion made and it didn't work. The customer support guys said it was a problem with the board, which I know to be horseshit. A few weeks later this happened to a ton of people in my area with their WoW home server. We could connect to every single server in the game except the one our main characters were on. Blizzard insisted the problem was Comcast, and Comcast insisted it was Blizzard. After about 18 hours it was fixed.

Basically, you need to use a proxy server of some kind and just wait it out. It sucks, but then that's Comcasts MO.

Darth Wong wrote:Have you tried contacting your ISP's support people to ask if they know what this is?

It's Comcast; I'd be better off pouring the blood of a dozen virgins on the router.

Howedar wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Have you tried contacting your ISP's support people to ask if they know what this is?

It's Comcast; I'd be better off pouring the blood of a dozen virgins on the router.

So ... they are not exactly the champions of customer service?

Darth Wong wrote:

Howedar wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Have you tried contacting your ISP's support people to ask if they know what this is?

It's Comcast; I'd be better off pouring the blood of a dozen virgins on the router.

So ... they are not exactly the champions of customer service?

The only issue I ever had with them were the 2 instances where they just brushed me off and said that it wasn't a problem with them, but rather with this board or the Blizzard servers. With other issues they have been excellent.

Before moving to WA I had Brighthouse (basically Time Warner Cable) broadband and their customer support was essentially some guy in a call center in Canada reading a few things off a list that you can try depending on the problem you are having, then sending out a technician at the next availability when none of the "solutions" worked.

With Comcast they seem to be actual tech support people who know what they are talking about and will stay on the line with you for as long as it takes to walk you through some different solutions. So far I haven't had an issue where they needed to send someone out. Too bad their equipment completely blows.

Howedar wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Have you tried contacting your ISP's support people to ask if they know what this is?

It's Comcast; I'd be better off pouring the blood of a dozen virgins on the router.

I sympathize with you, man.
My former ISP (Sigecom, now WOW!) managed to go from top drawer customer service and tech support to blaming every single problem on me during the 7 years I stuck with them.

The last straw was when the service died over the weekend and they claimed I had a bad modem and they'd sell me a new one for $50, despite the fact that just a few months before, they were giving the things away to new customers.
Needless to say, the modem wasn't the problem and the new one didn't fix the issue.

I did force them into refunding my $50 and then switched ISP's.
Insight's tech support so far has both been honest with me when the problem is on their end, and will tell me outright when the cause of the outage is scheduled maintenance (I'm on a lot in the early morning hours because I work 2nd shift).
Plus I didn't have the feeling after talking with Insight that I knew more about their network than the tech support guy did.
Dealing with the clueless Sigecom people left me feeling exactly that way.

Sigecom would deny any fault and claim the problem was on my end.

IMHO, the best thing for you would be to switch ISP's if at all possible.

Darth Wong wrote:

Howedar wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Have you tried contacting your ISP's support people to ask if they know what this is?

It's Comcast; I'd be better off pouring the blood of a dozen virgins on the router.

So ... they are not exactly the champions of customer service?

Really, is any major telecom?

I guess to be fair, if I were some major IT guy and some customer called me and told me my DNS server was flunky, I'd tell him he didn't know WTF he was talking about. That's what I'd expect from Comcast.

Howedar wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:

Howedar wrote:

It's Comcast; I'd be better off pouring the blood of a dozen virgins on the router.

So ... they are not exactly the champions of customer service?

Really, is any major telecom?

I guess to be fair, if I were some major IT guy and some customer called me and told me my DNS server was flunky, I'd tell him he didn't know WTF he was talking about. That's what I'd expect from Comcast.

Actually, you're more likely to get a response of "My D N what?"

The problem has automagically fixed itself. Hurrah!

Howedar wrote:The problem has automagically fixed itself. Hurrah!

Bad routing tables, perhaps. Internet routing protocols are voodoo magic.