StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I just spent the last six hours wrestling with this stupid wireless network and cable connection. Quick run-down for you- about a week ago we started noticing our internet was acting kooky. Random disconnects, severe slowdown, etc. But during all this, not a single problem with the connectivity (according to those nice bright lights on the modem). It got increasingly worse, until last night where I wasn't able to be online for more than 30 seconds at a time.

We guessed that someone in the area was jumping onto our wireless network and hogging all our bandwidth, slowing things down. So I spent the morning setting up a secured wireless network for just our four computers here. No dice. Connection was still sketchy at best.

So spend another few hours on the phone with those retards at Comcast trying to troubleshoot the thing. We tried two different modems with no success, so they decide that we're experiencing signal loss, and they'll have to send out a technician to repair it. The earliest they can do it? Sunday. Four days from now. So I schedule the repair visit, tell them to go fuck themselves, and spend another hour tinkering with the whole thing myself.

In the entire CAD office I have finally got this single computer online in a fashion that allows me to upload the comic and post news for you. I'm pretty damned irritated right now. It's very frustrating when 80% of your business is run online, and you can't access it reliably.

C:\>ping www.google.com
Ping request could not find host www.google.com. Please check the name and try again.

C:\>ping bbs.stardestroyer.net

Pinging bbs.stardestroyer.net [206.210.96.180] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 206.210.96.180: bytes=32 time=96ms TTL=134
Reply from 206.210.96.180: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=134
Reply from 206.210.96.180: bytes=32 time=108ms TTL=134
Reply from 206.210.96.180: bytes=32 time=114ms TTL=134

Ping statistics for 206.210.96.180:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 95ms, Maximum = 114ms, Average = 103ms

C:\>ping google.com

Pinging google.com [216.239.39.99] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.239.39.99: bytes=32 time=83ms TTL=237
Reply from 216.239.39.99: bytes=32 time=82ms TTL=237
Reply from 216.239.39.99: bytes=32 time=84ms TTL=237
Reply from 216.239.39.99: bytes=32 time=82ms TTL=237

Ping statistics for 216.239.39.99:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 82ms, Maximum = 84ms, Average = 82ms

C:\>ping apple.com

Pinging apple.com [17.254.3.183] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 17.254.3.183: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=53
Reply from 17.254.3.183: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 17.254.3.183:
Packets: Sent = 2, Received = 2, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 38ms, Maximum = 40ms, Average = 39ms
Control-C
^C
C:\>ping www.google.com
Ping request could not find host www.google.com. Please check the name and try again.

Darth Mall wrote:This has been happening for the past few day. They are suffering from DNS outtages thats hitting them nation wide. I just got off the phone with the tech, and I managed to recive all the days of this month for free.

Of course it took me 5 tries to actually get thru and not get a busy signal

Your best bet is to try and find another DNS server to use for the moment.

Theres some more info up here, but apart from the we are suffering nation wide outtages, comcast has said nothing.

The tech I talked to said that this will hopefully be the last time this happens, but I seem to doubt it. That would be asking to much. All I can say is that comcast is gonna be losing a bunch of money because of this.

Praxis wrote:
Any DNS servers you can recommend?

Praxis wrote:You rock.

Praxis wrote:Oh goody. I got a free day.

Why Comcast is chasing DNS outages
-Posted by Phil Windley @ 5:04 pm

If you’re not a Comcast customer, you’re probably blissfully unaware of the problems that Comcast customers have been experiencing the last few weeks. If you are a Comcast customer, then like me, you’ve likely experienced serious downtime and you’re probably wondering what’s going on. I’ve heard a few things through the grapevine and what I’ve heard hasn’t made me very comfortable.

I speculated on my blog that Comcast was getting early warning signals of impending disaster several weeks ago and that they ignored them. What I’ve heard since is that Comcast essentially got caught with their pants down trying to support millions of customers on inadequate infrastructure. They’ve been getting hit with recurring distributed denial of service attacks to their DNS infrastructure–such as it is. The root problem seems to be that Comcast has a DNS architecture that consists of lots of scripts and some DNS software running on a couple of servers.

Because they’ve got no management tools and little or no failover, when they get hit, they can’t respond effectively. They’re essentially fighting a five alarm fire with a bucket brigade. As a consequence, they have had multiple, multi-million customer, multi-hour outages.

What’s amazing is that such a huge service provider has been so neglectful of a core part of it’s architecture. They ought to be using one or more reliable DNS service providers with rock-solid architectures, fail over, and management tools.

I can sympathize with Comcast’s position. Excite@Home got themselves in this predicament and that, combined with an unsympathetic board, was their eventual undoing. Ultimately, broadband companies have to face the fact that they differentiate on service and not much else. If they’re not investing in the infrastructure that makes that service rock-solid, then they’re setting themselves up for longterm failure.

CIOs ought to ask themselves what their DNS infrastructure looks like. Are you running it yourself? Should you be? Outsourcing your DNS is not all that expensive in the grand scheme of things and is one less headache you’ve got. Building a DNS infrastructure, not to mention training system administrators, to handle these kinds of attacks isn’t easy and yet it may be the weakest link in your online presence.

If you’re a Comcast customer, what can you do in the meantime? I was able to solve my problem because I had access to an alternate DNS provider. You may not be as lucky. I’ve also heard that setting up a local DNS cache (which many of the new consumer-grade routers do automatically) also helps. A friend sent me these instructions for setting up a DNS cache on an OS X machine. I’m sure similar instructions can be found for Linux and maybe even XP.