cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?
I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office. The fix for this problem is to reboot the Comcast cable modem, however I don't understand how the modem could be the culprit. The website in question is nnerenmls.com and the modem is configured to use Comcast's DNS servers 68.87.71.226 68.87.73.242 One red herring: It would seem that Comcast changed their DNS servers, because the ones currenty in the modem configuration do not appear in the list http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.php I thought to myself, I just switch to Google's Public DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) I'm pretty sure they are not going to change. However, it doesn't make sense to me that one website would fail, while general DNS would still be working. And, at the time of the failures, other people using Comcast can resolve that domain meaning it doesn't even appear to be an issue where the target domain is occasionally falling off the web. Any ideas on what could cause this and how to troubleshoot? Greg Rundlett ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com wrote: I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office. The fix for this problem is to reboot the Comcast cable modem, however I don't understand how the modem could be the culprit. The website in question is nnerenmls.com and the modem is configured to use Comcast's DNS servers 68.87.71.226 68.87.73.242 Those /are/ Comcast DNS servers in their opt-out configuration which means that those are the servers that do regular DNS. The other list is for Comcast's Domain Helper service which is their service to answer your typos with ads. One red herring: It would seem that Comcast changed their DNS servers, because the ones currenty in the modem configuration do not appear in the list http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.php I thought to myself, I just switch to Google's Public DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) I'm pretty sure they are not going to change. However, it doesn't make sense to me that one website would fail, while general DNS would still be working. And, at the time of the failures, other people using Comcast can resolve that domain meaning it doesn't even appear to be an issue where the target domain is occasionally falling off the web. Any ideas on what could cause this and how to troubleshoot? Greg Rundlett ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com wrote: I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office. The fix for this problem is to reboot the Comcast cable modem, however I don't understand how the modem could be the culprit. The website in question is nnerenmls.com and the modem is configured to use Comcast's DNS servers 68.87.71.226 68.87.73.242 One red herring: It would seem that Comcast changed their DNS servers, because the ones currenty in the modem configuration do not appear in the list http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.php I thought to myself, I just switch to Google's Public DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) I'm pretty sure they are not going to change. However, it doesn't make sense to me that one website would fail, while general DNS would still be working. And, at the time of the failures, other people using Comcast can resolve that domain meaning it doesn't even appear to be an issue where the target domain is occasionally falling off the web. Any ideas on what could cause this and how to troubleshoot? We have that problem here time to time. It doesn't appear to be a DNS issue in our case it's always been a very strange routing problem that happens after a bunch of correct hops. We are lucky enough to have a 2nd internet connection and when we have this problem here I can traceroute from each connection and the comcast one normally will get to the correct datacenter and then take a different hop from our T1. I've never been able to make any sense out of it. But for this reason I have a few sites setup to route out our T1 so that it doesn't cause any interruptions in our business. Rebooting the comcast router in our case has always resolved this routing problem. I'd be interested in any theories as to what causes the routing to go awry after many hops and outside of comcast's network. -- David ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?
Greg Rundlett writes: I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office. So, you are telling us that the site becomes inaccessible in the sense that it seems to fall out of the DNS? Any ideas on what could cause this and how to troubleshoot? When you know you are experiencing this problem, it might be useful to run these commands and provide us with the output: dig @68.87.71.226 nnerenmls.com A nnerenmls.com SOA dig @8.8.8.8 nnerenmls.com A nnerenmls.com SOA If might be good to save the output of these too at a point in time when you know that everything seems to be working too. Regards, --kevin -- alumni.unh.edu!kdc / http://kdc-blog.blogspot.com/ GnuPG: D87F DAD6 0291 289C EB1E 781C 9BF8 A7D8 B280 F24E Wipe him down with gasoline 'til his arms are hard and mean From now on boys this iron boat's your home So heave away, boys. -- Tom Waits ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 11:19 AM, David Miller davi...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com wrote: I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office. The fix for this problem is to reboot the Comcast cable modem, however I don't understand how the modem could be the culprit. The website in question is nnerenmls.com and the modem is configured to use Comcast's DNS servers 68.87.71.226 68.87.73.242 One red herring: It would seem that Comcast changed their DNS servers, because the ones currenty in the modem configuration do not appear in the list http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.php I thought to myself, I just switch to Google's Public DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) I'm pretty sure they are not going to change. However, it doesn't make sense to me that one website would fail, while general DNS would still be working. And, at the time of the failures, other people using Comcast can resolve that domain meaning it doesn't even appear to be an issue where the target domain is occasionally falling off the web. Any ideas on what could cause this and how to troubleshoot? We have that problem here time to time. It doesn't appear to be a DNS issue in our case it's always been a very strange routing problem that happens after a bunch of correct hops. We are lucky enough to have a 2nd internet connection and when we have this problem here I can traceroute from each connection and the comcast one normally will get to the correct datacenter and then take a different hop from our T1. I've never been able to make any sense out of it. But for this reason I have a few sites setup to route out our T1 so that it doesn't cause any interruptions in our business. Rebooting the comcast router in our case has always resolved this routing problem. I'd be interested in any theories as to what causes the routing to go awry after many hops and outside of comcast's network. I guess I should have prefixed that with make sure it's a DNS issue and not a routing issue. Because my prior experience with Comcast Business with the symptom being one site being inaccessible makes me believe that it's a weird routing issue. This routing issue is apparently a pretty common issue with Comcast Business. The person who made the suggestion to reboot the router was tech support at SaaS provider that we were having a problem accessing. Apparently they have had a few customers with strange routing issues with Comcast Business where rebooting the Comcast router resolved it. You can test for this issue by doing a traceroute before and after rebooting the router and comparing the output. I think you'll find out that the DNS resolution is the same before and after you reboot. At least if it's the same issue that I've run across with Comcast Business. -- David ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 11:36 AM, David Miller davi...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 11:19 AM, David Miller davi...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com wrote: I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office. The fix for this problem is to reboot the Comcast cable modem, however I don't understand how the modem could be the culprit. The website in question is nnerenmls.com and the modem is configured to use Comcast's DNS servers 68.87.71.226 68.87.73.242 One red herring: It would seem that Comcast changed their DNS servers, because the ones currenty in the modem configuration do not appear in the list http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.php I thought to myself, I just switch to Google's Public DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) I'm pretty sure they are not going to change. However, it doesn't make sense to me that one website would fail, while general DNS would still be working. And, at the time of the failures, other people using Comcast can resolve that domain meaning it doesn't even appear to be an issue where the target domain is occasionally falling off the web. Any ideas on what could cause this and how to troubleshoot? We have that problem here time to time. It doesn't appear to be a DNS issue in our case it's always been a very strange routing problem that happens after a bunch of correct hops. We are lucky enough to have a 2nd internet connection and when we have this problem here I can traceroute from each connection and the comcast one normally will get to the correct datacenter and then take a different hop from our T1. I've never been able to make any sense out of it. But for this reason I have a few sites setup to route out our T1 so that it doesn't cause any interruptions in our business. Rebooting the comcast router in our case has always resolved this routing problem. I'd be interested in any theories as to what causes the routing to go awry after many hops and outside of comcast's network. I guess I should have prefixed that with make sure it's a DNS issue and not a routing issue. Because my prior experience with Comcast Business with the symptom being one site being inaccessible makes me believe that it's a weird routing issue. This routing issue is apparently a pretty common issue with Comcast Business. The person who made the suggestion to reboot the router was tech support at SaaS provider that we were having a problem accessing. Apparently they have had a few customers with strange routing issues with Comcast Business where rebooting the Comcast router resolved it. You can test for this issue by doing a traceroute before and after rebooting the router and comparing the output. I think you'll find out that the DNS resolution is the same before and after you reboot. At least if it's the same issue that I've run across with Comcast Business. -- David Thanks, I think we're experiencing the same problem you describe. I'm not actually at the office that's affected, so I haven't done a traceroute or a dig at the time when it's out. I just know that the user's browser returns a Site not found error as if DNS didn't work. Granted, you'd get the same result if routing didn't work, so I think it's actually a routing glitch. I'll try getting some answer from Comcast, although I'm just plain fatigued with dealing with them for any purpose. [1] Greg Rundlett [1] Did you know that as a business class customer, you get three mutually exclusive logins to access and manage your account. One uses credentials that are given to you at the time of account creation (was likely setup years ago, so of course you've forgotten those). That login gives the ability to subscribe to and setup additional services that you don't give a crap about - like a sharepoint service. You'll need a separate login to manage the VOIP aka digital voice service (but the 'portal' doesn't include access to important aspects like managing your billing address). Any you'll need another login to manage your customer profile etc. -- your real account. And if you call technical support to change something like your billing address, they will need to reset your account username and password in order to make the change. Their procedure is to set your username AND password to the phone number of your service. I suspect that it's trivial to gain illegitimate access to a large number of comcast digital voice subscriber accounts. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Qi-Hardware Nanonote group purchase?
Posted this at work also, then figured maybe someone on this list would be interested: I'm going to buy one of these to see how well it can replace my now-defunct, Rockbox-running iPod: http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Hardware-Ben They're $99, but they ship from Hong Kong so shipping a single unit adds ~$30 to the price; shipping more units together increases the shipping-price but only ~logarithmically, so there's an opportunity to spread the shipping-cost out with a `group buy'; for example, it looks like shipping goes down to $11/unit if I order 5. Anyone interested? -- Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Qi-Hardware Nanonote group purchase?
Tom Buskey t...@buskey.name writes: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: Posted this at work also, then figured maybe someone on this list would be interested: I'm going to buy one of these to see how well it can replace my now-defunct, Rockbox-running iPod: http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Hardware-Ben They're $99, but they ship from Hong Kong so shipping a single unit adds ~$30 to the price; shipping more units together increases the shipping-price but only ~logarithmically, so there's an opportunity to spread the shipping-cost out with a `group buy'; for example, it looks like shipping goes down to $11/unit if I order 5. Anyone interested? Is this the same as the Bennote in the latest Linux Journal? You caught me with my pants down--I have to admit that I don't subscribe to Linux Journal..., though someone's pointed out to me at least one interested article in it every month for the last six months or so. But, yes--it is. Now I'll have to go ask my friend for his LJ, again -- Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com wrote: I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office. The fix for this problem is to reboot the Comcast cable modem, however I don't understand how the modem could be the culprit. What leads you to believe this is a DNS problem? What happens when you try to access the site? Do you get an error message? If so, what is the error message? Can you ping the website by name? Can you ping the website by IP address? If you do a DNS lookup for the website name using host or dig (or even nslookup), does it work? Do this both using your default DNS servers, and by explicitly specifying various DNS servers, e.g.: dig ANY nnerenmls.com. dig ANY nnerenmls.com. @68.87.71.226 dig ANY nnerenmls.com. @8.8.8.8 What OS and version are you running? Are you current with updates? What web browser and version are you using? Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies? Have you tried a different web browser? Have you tried a different computer? What model Comcast-provided equipment do you have? Are you using a router, or is the computer directly connected to a cable modem? (Be aware that some Comcast equipment combines a cable modem with a router.) If you have your own router: Are you running the latest firmware? What if you connect your computer directly to the cable modem? Etc., etc. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Qi-Hardware Nanonote group purchase?
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: I'm going to buy one of these to see how well it can replace my now-defunct, Rockbox-running iPod: http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Hardware-Ben Am I right in that this thing cannot run an X server? -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?
On 9/3/2010 11:19 AM, David Miller wrote: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) g...@freephile.com mailto:g...@freephile.com wrote: I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office. The fix for this problem is to reboot the Comcast cable modem, however I don't understand how the modem could be the culprit. The website in question is nnerenmls.com http://nnerenmls.com and the modem is configured to use Comcast's DNS servers 68.87.71.226 68.87.73.242 One red herring: It would seem that Comcast changed their DNS servers, because the ones currenty in the modem configuration do not appear in the list http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.php I thought to myself, I just switch to Google's Public DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) I'm pretty sure they are not going to change. However, it doesn't make sense to me that one website would fail, while general DNS would still be working. And, at the time of the failures, other people using Comcast can resolve that domain meaning it doesn't even appear to be an issue where the target domain is occasionally falling off the web. Any ideas on what could cause this and how to troubleshoot? We have that problem here time to time. It doesn't appear to be a DNS issue in our case it's always been a very strange routing problem that happens after a bunch of correct hops. We are lucky enough to have a 2nd internet connection and when we have this problem here I can traceroute from each connection and the comcast one normally will get to the correct datacenter and then take a different hop from our T1. I've never been able to make any sense out of it. But for this reason I have a few sites setup to route out our T1 so that it doesn't cause any interruptions in our business. Rebooting the comcast router in our case has always resolved this routing problem. I'd be interested in any theories as to what causes the routing to go awry after many hops and outside of comcast's network. We've had this strange routing problem several times over the last year. It makes no sense to me either, but power cycling the Comcast-provided SMSC cable modem/router has solved the problem in all four cases at three different clients. In one instance, the traceroute made it to the very last hop before their web server, and then died. I wondered if it could be some odd TTL issue. Comcast's tech support has been pleasant, but not very informative about the cause. Since power cycling works, and is quick, I haven't tried to diagnose it further though I'd like to know why it happens. In one of the other cases the route to a specific IP number immediately went along a completely different path than another IP that was in the same destination network. The other case appeared to start playing leap frog half way to the destination (hop E to hop F to hop E, etc.). The fourth occurrence I just had them power cycle. There may have been more cases, but I documented how to power cycle the cable modem for them (they are all small enough that it hasn't been a major issue) and haven't heard about recurrences. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Qi-Hardware Nanonote group purchase?
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.comwrote: Posted this at work also, then figured maybe someone on this list would be interested: I'm going to buy one of these to see how well it can replace my now-defunct, Rockbox-running iPod: http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Hardware-Ben They're $99, but they ship from Hong Kong so shipping a single unit adds ~$30 to the price; shipping more units together increases the shipping-price but only ~logarithmically, so there's an opportunity to spread the shipping-cost out with a `group buy'; for example, it looks like shipping goes down to $11/unit if I order 5. Anyone interested? Is this the same as the Bennote in the latest Linux Journal? ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Qi-Hardware Nanonote group purchase?
Benjamin Scott dragonh...@gmail.com writes: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 5:24 PM, Thomas Charron twaf...@gmail.com wrote: http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Hardware-Ben Am I right in that this thing cannot run an X server? It presents a framebuffer, so I see no reason why it couldn't except for RAM. I mean as in, you won't find a working X server, not sure it can, just write one yourself. :) RAM may or may not be a problem. It's got 32 MB, which is more than anything Project Athena had at first, but software seems to take up more and more memory as times goes on. Maybe swapping to flash? Maybe. Swapping to flash is often a more realistic option than people expect-- partly because modern flash-disks (with onboard controllers performing wear-levelling) are *way* more resilient than people expect, and partly because the way that swap ends up being used is vastly different from what people expect--most notably, if there are parts of a program's in-memory image that are rarely (or never) used, then those parts can get swapped-out (once) to make room in RAM for disk-buffer/-cache, and then may never be touched again. Of course, it all depends on the program--if Xorg and whatever client applications you want to run actually, *actively* use all of the memory that they allocate all the time, then maybe `swap to flash' (or even `swap' at all) isn't such a great option. One interesting thing to note, though, is that `active' doesn't just mean `the program is running'; even if something is running, if you're not interacting with it, and it's not doing something of its own accord, then there's a good chance that the entire process can safely be swapped out and then not touched until you switch back to it. It looks like a fresh instance of Xorg occupies ~14 MB of RAM on my laptop. Hmm -- Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: Qi-Hardware Nanonote group purchase?
Shawn O'Shea sh...@eth0.net writes: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: Posted this at work also, then figured maybe someone on this list would be interested: I'm going to buy one of these to see how well it can replace my now-defunct, Rockbox-running iPod: http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Hardware-Ben Looks interesting. I'm waiting for the crop of Android-based PMPs coming out from the big names for my next iPod replacement. A few are in the pipe like the two announced at IFA in Germany this week. Samsung Galaxy Player 50 - http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/03/ samsung-galaxy-player-50-hands-on/ Philips GoGear Connect - http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/ philips-gogear-connect-hands-on/ Have you seen the Archos Android tablets? There are 2 of them out, right now (first hit the market late last year), also with other models on the way; it looks like Archos is actually behaving as a good member of the FOSS community, too. Radio Shack and Best Buy both carry some selection of them in stores, if you haven't seen them; if you have..., thoughts? -- Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
