DComTalk.com

I've been having problems with my dsl connection -- its Earthlink
service, on copper provisioned by Covad about 5 years ago. (This fine
service was $50/month, now $40/month).

For the last 3 weekends we have lost our ability to reach the internet
at least on Sunday evening, and this past weekend we had poor
connectivity from Saturday afternoon to Sunday.

Symptoms were:
(using ping, from a machine on my home network)
Could not reach the regular DNS server
Could always reach the backup DNS server
(I eventually changed the server settings on the Netgear 814 router
to go directly to the backup)
Could occasionally reach the mail system: smtp.mindspring.com
At other times could not ping, mail would time-out.
Could not ping or reach other sites on the internet (not even
google)

On Sunday evening I called mindspring. After 10 minutes, reached a
tech, who discovered that I had a home network, and forwarded me to
home network help / non-help. After >50 minutes on hold, I gave up.

Tried a 3rd time, got to a reasonably helpful person, though she was
fairly insistent that I change my trusted sites setting in Internet
explorer. (I do not trust anything to Internet Explorer. We use
Firefox on Linux and Mac OS at my home.) We did converse at a
reasonable level about pings and DNS settings.

At the same time as I started the 3rd call, I power cycled the netgear
router. I had previously power cycled it with no help the previous
night. In the course of that call, the connectivity came back.
Hurray! (time to change my service to sonic.net?) My question(s):

Is it possible that this was a problem in my gateway/router, not on
Earthlinks network? Since I could get outside my firewall to some
addresses, it seems unlikely that the problem is local.

Could the Earthlink tech have fixed something?

Could it be a coincidence that connectivity came back while I was
speaking to someone at Earthlink?

Does ANYONE else use this covad/earthlink service?

Thanks for your feedback. I lurk in ba.internet primarily, but thought
this may be of interest in comp.dcom.xdsl

-- Robert Neff
google@neffs.net goes into a spam bucket. try robert at that domain.

<google@neffs.net> wrote:

Is it possible that this was a problem in my gateway/router, not on
Earthlinks network? Since I could get outside my firewall to some
addresses, it seems unlikely that the problem is local.

Possibly. When doing ping tests, do you use the ping command
of your router, rather than pinging from a host on your local
network? If the former works but the latter does not, then
it's likely to be a local problem.

Steve

<google@neffs.net> wrote:

Steve wrote:

When doing ping tests, do you use the ping command
of your router, rather than pinging from a host on your local
network?

The router is a Netgear firewall-router. Ping tests are from hosts on
the internal network.
I've resisted connecting without the firewall because, well, I want the
firewall there. I don't have pppoe login software conveniently
installed on a system which should be allowed on the other side of the
firewall.

You should be able to telnet to the router and find a "ping" command
there.

If it's an older Netgear it may be failing.

Good luck.

Steve

Steve wrote:

When doing ping tests, do you use the ping command
of your router, rather than pinging from a host on your local
network?

The router is a Netgear firewall-router. Ping tests are from hosts on
the internal network.
I've resisted connecting without the firewall because, well, I want the
firewall there. I don't have pppoe login software conveniently
installed on a system which should be allowed on the other side of the
firewall.

-- Robert

google@neffs.net wrote:

Does ANYONE else use this covad/earthlink service?

I had Covad/Earthlink service for several years. It would periodically
go down compeletely, or slow down without explanation. Of course it was
impossible get any help.

Near the end, Usenet started going down for weeks at a time, then it
would come back up for a while, go down again, and getting any technical
support was of course impossible.

Earthlink support is horrific. It's endless power-cycling of everything,
modifications to your browser or network set-up, rather than any actual
diagnostics.

I switched to Sonic. I first got one machine going, before bringing up
the wireless network. Sonic apparently locked on to the MAC address of
the PC, and when I plugged in the router and it saw a different MAC
address, it got upset. I called them, and before I could finish
explaining what happened, I was being interrupted with, "yes, yes, I
know the exact problem, I've corrected it on my end."

The other thing I really like about Sonic is that they include VPN
service with every account.

[POSTED TO ba.internet - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <43949d21$0$38600$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net> on Mon, 05 Dec 2005 12:04:19
-0800, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:

google@neffs.net wrote:

Does ANYONE else use this covad/earthlink service?

I had Covad/Earthlink service for several years. It would periodically
go down compeletely, or slow down without explanation. Of course it was
impossible get any help.

Near the end, Usenet started going down for weeks at a time, then it
would come back up for a while, go down again, and getting any technical
support was of course impossible.

Earthlink support is horrific. ...

Look in the mirror, Steven.

--
Best regards,
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/>
CABLE MODEM/DSL GUIDE: <http://Cable-DSL.home.att.net/>

Did your ping tests use numeric IP addresses or host names?
Covad or Earthlink could have been having DNS server problems. In fact
based on the symptoms you describe it could have been all DNS.

Reseting the router may have also gotten you a fresh PPP session
with better results.

dave.wombat@gmail.com wrote:

Did your ping tests use numeric IP addresses or host names?
Covad or Earthlink could have been having DNS server problems. In fact
based on the symptoms you describe it could have been all DNS.

I was using numeric addresses. The failures are beyond DNS problems.
It turns out that reaching the primary
DNS server has been an un-reliable part of the experience. The backup
DNS server has been solid. Well, not really solid, but better.

It's past time to have a simple connection monitoring script going.
Any
*ux favorites out there? Google is my friend...

-- Robert

google@neffs.net writes:

I was using numeric addresses. The failures are beyond DNS problems.
It turns out that reaching the primary
DNS server has been an un-reliable part of the experience. The backup
DNS server has been solid. Well, not really solid, but better.

It's past time to have a simple connection monitoring script going.
Any
*ux favorites out there? Google is my friend...

I like smokeping. It makes a set of plots for various time scales,
using intensity and color to show latency and packet loss versus
time on the same plot. Intensity is used to show the latency distribution
at a particular time, hence the "smoke" part of the name.

It sends a small set of pings to the sites of your choice every five
minutes.

--
John P. Serafin | Operating a bicycle is more like driving than riding.
jps at pobox com | Operating an automobile is more like riding than driving.