Is this true? The past few days my usual 2.5-3.0Mbs speed dropped to
1/10 of that. Then yesterday it basically ground to a halt. I called comcast again and they claimed there were DNS problems affecting the entire US. Anyone else have internet connectivity issues late yesterday afternoon or evening?I found nothing in the news about it.
Dave
Had problems around 5pm Pacific time in Oregon! Matt
David wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
There weren't any DNS problems that I noticed on my Comcast feed 40 miles north of you, Dave. At least after 8:30 pm, when I got home, things were just fine.
Stuff happens. Tech support doesn't understand it until they fix it, and then, still maybe not. It's a miserable job to have to do for any length of time.
Patriarch
Internet Name Servers are built on a pyramid scheme!
Because I haven't seen any problem on my specific segment ( I haven't) does not mean that your Comcast scheme of hierarchy of DNS servers couldn't be having problems. Your setup thru Comcast may have a primary and secondary DNS and these could be local to you and having problems, but that does not mean EVERY where there is a problem.
Next time: try to use the command prompt (black screen) mini-app nslookup.exe. You should be able to google nslookup, Microsoft Knowledge Base nslookup, or many computer books for command line switches.
example: nslookup -q/A
if you get a timeout or other failure message, then you primary DNS may indeed have a problem.
try a site on the East Coast
and you can find out if just a segment of the geographical US could be having problems.
HTH Phil
Yep, just outside of Philadelphia on Comcast. I tried to access internet at around 9:30 and some sites would resolve and some would not. I tried some pings / tracerts and results were mixed. However, when they did fail, they failed on the name resolution.
Comcast's DNS servers were not answering queries, so anything you tried to do could not convert the host name to an IP address. My daughter told me it wasn't working around 4:30pm PDT when she got home, and it was still messed up when I got home around 6:30pm. My Linux box runs a caching DNS server so I just pointed the windows boxes at it for DNS service and that fixed them.
Whatever Comcast broke, they managed to fix around 8-9pm.
google for "Internet storm center". If they don't have it, it wasn't happening. akamai.com has a good public bulletin system as well, at least I think non-customers can get to a "health of the internet" status page.
I didn't get any notices, so if it happened, it wasn't big enough to trigger anything big.
Dave Hinz
I am not aware of any outage, nor is there any report of one on Google news. I am not involved in the day to day operations of DNS but I am usually informed of any major Internet outage as soon as it happens, particularly if it is a DNS issue since I am curently investigating criminal schemes that make use of the DNS.
It looks to me as if it was a comcast only event.
Excellent advice, Dave. Thanks! I googled "internet storm center"; came up with lots of hits, and then came across a page that directed me to
Dave
Dave H> >
Thanks to all for the confirmation that "something" was happening on the net to Comcast users in various areas. Today I had a bit more of the same, but only for moments at a time. I've seen my speed back up to the usual 2-3Mb/s. Comcast offered to send a truck out to my house today, but I declined when I learned that they officially declared an ongoing problem in the Cupertino area just north of me that matched the type of connectivity issue I've been having since late yesterday.
Thanks again.
Dave
David wrote:
On 8 Apr 2005 13:25:08 -0700, the inscrutable "Phillip Hallam-Baker" spake:
I'm on Starband and noticed it. I lost an Ebay auction by not being able to bid on the item in the last few minutes.
yep off an on for days now.
Sounds like they don't know what they're talking about, *or* they didn't understand your problem.
DNS problems will affect _starting_ a connection. *only*.
Once the connection is established, DNS does not enter the picture.
I agree with Robert. It's not DNS. Probably just the amount of traffic. That can be caused in a number of ways.
If you're ever interested in how the Internet as a whole is doing, go here:
A couple of years back, someone dug up one of the major fiber feeds near Chicago. We had issues with our sites in California (we're east coast US) for several days solid & then intermittently for weeks.
Aquisitions are a major source of delays, too. When Algx bought IDS (?), they changed all the routing schemes on the old network. We had issues for several days before things settled down & the tables all sync'd up. Usually, you don't get a delay due to this, just 404's, but delays can be part of it.
Major events can also clog the connections - so blaming it on the Pope might not be too outrageous. Residential Comcast customers usually notice a 3pm slow down. That's when all the kids get home from school & suddenly hit the network.
Jim
That's exactly the problem I'm having now. In the afternoon, the speed drops from 2,500+ to around 300 - 1,100. Last night a comcast rep checked from his end to my cable modem and found great ping times UNTIL reaching my modem. This morning I got 2700+. I'm not very optimistic that the service call today will uncover anything wrong at my house. It will be just like when you take your car to the mechanic; nothing will turn up!
I guess all those commercials a while back depicting neighbors complaining about each other hogging bandwidth are true, despite Comcast's protestations to the contrary. Why don't I believe them? :)
Dave
Jim wrote:
That's the right link, couldn't think of it at the time. I get bulletins from some of our security and infrastructure providers on big events, and didn't get one for this one.
The Sans site is a good one for doing a quick "OK, we're seeing strange things, is it just us or is there something going on". Was the first thing I checked a few years ago when, suddenly, during the day, our webserver traffic cut to a third of what it had been and what was expected. Seems someone had pulled the plug on the east coast.
Hate it when _that_ happens.
To be fair to them, it may have affected all of _their_ customers across the US, just not the rest of us.
Assuming the connections in question are to the same host.
FINALLY the Comcast problem is out in the open. Plenty of newstories today about the slowdown. 2 guys from comcast showed up at my house at
7:30 last night to see how my connection was doing. It was the first weeknight that it had worked well since a week ago Tuesday. They said that at 3:30 AM (Thursday) their Denver facility had sent an email out that DNS issues had been solved. So here I sit with a decent connection. My fingers are crossed. (and my DNS settings are changed )Dave
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