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[SOLVED?] Internet Issues

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ticojohn
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[SOLVED?] Internet Issues

#1 Post by ticojohn »

I live in Costa Rica and have been having major internet connectivity issues for about a week. After complaining to my ISP, and them assuring me there was nothing wrong with their service, I found that there are some big issues with Century Link (Level 3) and there are major disruptions affecting most of the East and Northeast of the USA. I know there was a optical fiber issue in the North Carolina area, a month ago, but surely that would have been taken care of by now. It's getting to be a real PITA. Does anybody here have knowledge of what is going on?
Last edited by ticojohn on 2017-12-19 13:34, edited 1 time in total.
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dotlj
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Re: Internet Issues

#2 Post by dotlj »

It's a good idea to check whatever you have on your side, such as router, switches, wireless or issues at a local exchange. Check with other people using the same ISP and keep complaining to the ISP.
If you don't get a satisfactory response, look for alternative ISPs.

fmp
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Re: Internet Issues

#3 Post by fmp »

I have no knowledge of what's going on, but the last time there was a major outage in multiple locations across north america, the backbone providers were being ddos'ed: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/hac ... et-outage/

so if you're not already using 3rd party dns, it's worth a shot to change yours and see if the situation improves: https://www.opennic.org/

also do a traceroute and see where the connections are dropping off.

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Re: Internet Issues

#4 Post by ticojohn »

dotlj wrote:It's a good idea to check whatever you have on your side, such as router, switches, wireless or issues at a local exchange. Check with other people using the same ISP and keep complaining to the ISP.
If you don't get a satisfactory response, look for alternative ISPs.
I have tried with two ISPs and get the same results. As best I can figure by looking at so "internet outage maps" there is a significant outae problem for may different web sites in the northeast, As to alternative ISPs, well I am pretty limited here in Costa Rica. The speed test between my computer and my ISP is great. The problem is going outside Costa Rica, and in particular anything that might be in the northeast USA.
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GarryRicketson
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Re: Internet Issues

#5 Post by GarryRicketson »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMxkRh7sx84
Shark Bites Fiber Optic Cables Undersea 15.8.2014
Google is reinforcing its underwater fibre-optic cables to protect against future shark attacks Google is reinforcing its private underwater fibre-optic cables with an extra layer of protective
Maybe some cables are not shark proof yet, or Jaws came along.

---- edit ------
My servers located in Nevada, had a fiber cable get damaged, it took over a week, before the cable could be repaired,... who knows how long it might take
on one that is in the ocean.

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Re: Internet Issues

#6 Post by bw123 »

I'm in TN on a low budget 3g network, barely above dsl, no problems lately.

traceroute: It's package lft
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Re: Internet Issues

#7 Post by ticojohn »

fmp wrote:I have no knowledge of what's going on, but the last time there was a major outage in multiple locations across north america, the backbone providers were being ddos'ed: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/hac ... et-outage/

so if you're not already using 3rd party dns, it's worth a shot to change yours and see if the situation improves: https://www.opennic.org/

also do a traceroute and see where the connections are dropping off.
Have done a traceroute and after about 11 hops I start getting a *** response. That could be because of a timeout or it could be that the routers are configured to not respond to a ping (for security reasons), Don't know how I could change the DNS as the cable modem is rented from the ISP and it is password protected so I can't get into it to change the DNS. Thought about using Google's DNS (I think it is 8.8.8.8).

No, having said all that, I have seen that my ISP has been swapping around the primary and secondary DNS quite a bit the last week. Perhaps they have just seriously screwed up the DNS tables. Not impossible. I sometimes think they are rather lazy and border on incompetence.

Also, I have noticed that website load times have improved in the last hour and that the internet outage maps seem to be showing fewer problems in the northeast.

Thanks for the feedback.
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Re: Internet Issues

#8 Post by ticojohn »

GarryRicketson wrote: Maybe some cables are not shark proof yet, or Jaws came along.
HAHAHA. Always a pleasure to get your humorous responses Garry. Actually, I think the problem is in the northeast USA. Many providers are showing outages. As to the sharks, what about ships? Last year a medium sized merchant ship ran aground near Limon (where the fiber comes ashore) and damaged the cable. But it only took them three days to fix it. I really think the current problem I am having is not between Costa Rica and Miami (the other end of the fiber) as I can get to Miami servers with no problem.

We actually have two undersea cables coming to Costa Rica. One on the Atlantic side and the other on the Pacific side. And I can get to West coast servers with no problem. Problems mostly when I try to go deep into the northeast USA.
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Re: Internet Issues

#9 Post by Bulkley »

ticojohn, a quick test might be to try using the Tor browser. It uses a distributed network therefore your bits will go by different routes. Tor doesn't need to be installed. Just download the tar ball and open it in your user space; it can run from there.

As suggested by someone above a better system might be a VPN because you can choose a route.

These are just speculations and might not help. I am wondering if US lack of Net neutrality has already had an effect with suppliers in the US deciding that Costa Rica doesn't matter.

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Re: Internet Issues

#10 Post by ticojohn »

Bulkley wrote:
I am wondering if US lack of Net neutrality has already had an effect with suppliers in the US deciding that Costa Rica doesn't matter.
Well, that is an interesting speculation, but the problems started before the official FCC declaration.
I'll give the TOR browser a shot.
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Re: Internet Issues

#11 Post by bw123 »

Bulkley wrote:... I am wondering if US lack of Net neutrality has already had an effect with suppliers in the US deciding that Costa Rica doesn't matter.
Wow, I thought of the same thing when I had to wait two seconds yesterday for some web page to load. Random hangs do happen, sometimes the status is "Looking up.." which I assume is a dns error, then other times I do see hangs with "Connected to..." or, "Waiting for..." and it's a minor annoyance. I can't say it's any worse or different lately. I saw this kind of stuff on dialup back in the day, and always just thought of it as typical network behavior.
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ticojohn
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Re: Internet Issues

#12 Post by ticojohn »

bw123 wrote: Wow, I thought of the same thing when I had to wait two seconds yesterday for some web page to load.
When things are working well it takes about one second to load Yahoo News. Lately its been more like 20 to 30 seconds, but things seem to be improving. Only about 5 seconds right now. And I tried Bulkleys suggestion and downloaded the Tor browser. It is actually slower than Firefox-esr.

I suspect that there has either been a massive Ddos or some kind of equipment failure somewhere in the internet backbone as many websites seem to be affected.

Appreciate all the fine comments. Thanks.
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Re: Internet Issues

#13 Post by GarryRicketson »

Well, glad to see the humour is appreciated,.. My ISP is terrible, but at least
they are sort of honest, years ago, when I had first installed Debian Squeeze,
I was not sure, some times I connected good, and it was ok, some times slow,
and other time not able to connect at all, but I couldn't find anything wrong on
my settings, so any way I called them, and to my surprise, they confirmed :
" I am sorry, yes we are having problems in you area, it should be back up in a few hours",.... several times, same thing when I called them, they confirmed it was on their end, so any way , now I don't bother calling them, nor running in circles trying to figure out what is wrong with my system, when it's to slow, I just go do something else, when it is completely down, the same, just do something else , until it is back up again,... nothing I can do to change it,..and there really is no other ISP with any service to this area, so that is not a option.
------ edit ------
Something nice, now , I have a newer device, a cell phone, with usb tethering, the phone has a little "bar" thingy, that shows the signal strength, so when it
is real low, or no signal, I know it is the ISP, and not my system.

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Re: Internet Issues

#14 Post by fmp »

ticojohn wrote: Have done a traceroute and after about 11 hops I start getting a *** response. That could be because of a timeout or it could be that the routers are configured to not respond to a ping (for security reasons),
Have you provided a traceroute to your isp? perhaps you could get lucky & your ticket will get forwarded to someone who could provide you an explanation.
Don't know how I could change the DNS as the cable modem is rented from the ISP and it is password protected so I can't get into it to change the DNS.
http://192.168.0.1 or http://192.168.1.1 is almost always the user interface for modems.
research the modem name & brand online, most of them have default factory username & passwords you can use to get into them.
worst case scenario, you can change it via network manager or wicd, too.
(or, edit /etc/resolv.conf directly) and prevent network manager from modifying it & re-adding your router's dns, with chattr:

Code: Select all

chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf
also try disabling ipv6 (also doable via network manager) and see if that helps
Thought about using Google's DNS (I think it is 8.8.8.8).
if you are concerned about privacy, opennic or even opendns (owned by cisco) is a better choice than anything google. 8)

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Re: Internet Issues

#15 Post by ticojohn »

After further investigation, I think I was wrong on my analysis. I thought that the issue was an east coast thing when in fact it is a west coast thing. Costa Rica is served by two submarine fibers. One is on the east coast of CR and goes up that coast of Central America with probable add/drop points in Nicaragua, Hinduras, Belize, etc before going to Miami. The other cable, on the west cost of CR, goes up that coast with probable add/drop points in Mexico and then the Los Angeles area. It is quite likely, since Yahoo servers are in Sunnyvale, CA, that my traffic to Yahoo is going through Los Angeles. And the current situaiton in the LA area, with the fires, may well be disrupting internet service. Pure speculation of course, but it fits.
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Re: Internet Issues

#16 Post by ticojohn »

Now this is weird. After a week of really bad connection speeds I did something that seems to have helped the situation and I am totally perplexed. Thinking that maybe there was something messed up on my computer I renamed the folder ~./mozilla and then launched Firefox. I then closed Firefox, deleted the new ~./mozilla folder and restored the older folder as ~./mozilla. The speed is back to normal. What the heck? I am just going to mark this as solved and move on. LOL!
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Re: Internet Issues

#17 Post by bw123 »

ticojohn wrote:Now this is weird. After a week of really bad connection speeds I did something that seems to have helped the situation and I am totally perplexed.
Maybe somebody nearby has a wireless printer and it died all of a sudden? My neighbors have one and it has better signal from across the street than my router does at 10 feet.
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Re: [SOLVED?] Internet Issues

#18 Post by ticojohn »

Just did a WebPageTest http://www.webpagetest.org/ opening Yahoo News on Firefox browser using the Orlando Florida test site. Full page load time is around 18 seconds, so I guess the problem is not my computer, router, or connection to the web. Yahoo sucks! But we already new that, didn't we.

UPDATE: This will hopefully be my last post regarding this issue. I did several speed tests to different locations and watched the System Monitor Tool while doing so. I get essentially full speed (8 mbps) to every location. Then watched the System Monitor Tool while loading the Yahoo home page. I get barely 240kbps while loading Yahoo. I guess that is enough said on this subject. Need to find a better news service (and I don't use Google News since they changed their format).
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Re: [SOLVED?] Internet Issues

#19 Post by ticojohn »

I saw another post where it was recommended to edit /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf and add a line supercede domain-name-servers, with the correct dns info, such that the /etc/resolv.conf would have the desired nameserver addresses after rebooting. I did so, using the Google DNS information and lo and behold it worked. However, I then decided to use the OpenDNS server addresses and made the changes to /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf. But the OPenDNS addresses are not being recognized. Here is the code:

Code: Select all

#send host-name "andare.fugue.com";
send host-name = gethostname();
#send dhcp-client-identifier 1:0:a0:24:ab:fb:9c;
#send dhcp-lease-time 3600;
#supersede domain-name "fugue.com home.vix.com";
# opendns servers
supersede domain-name-servers "208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220";
#prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;
I have tried both with and without quotes around the dns addresses. Any clues as to why it's not working with the opendns server addresses?
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Re: [SOLVED?] Internet Issues

#20 Post by fmp »

Here is my /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf:

Code: Select all

option rfc3442-classless-static-routes code 121 = array of unsigned integer 8;

send host-name = gethostname();
request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers,
        domain-name, domain-name-servers, domain-search, host-name,
        dhcp6.name-servers, dhcp6.domain-search, dhcp6.fqdn, dhcp6.sntp-servers,
        netbios-name-servers, netbios-scope, interface-mtu,
        rfc3442-classless-static-routes, ntp-servers;
and /etc/resolv.conf:

Code: Select all

nameserver 204.152.184.76 #isc
nameserver 208.67.220.220 #opendns
nameserver 208.67.222.222 #opendns

# chattr -i /etc/resolv.conf to make this file writeable
if you try my method; first back up both your files.
then, after editing /etc/resolv.conf, also run:

Code: Select all

chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf
(for good measure, after running chattr, check /etc/resolv.conf again, to make sure network manager didn't swoop in and change it at just the right time to evade notice)

chattr +i will prevent network manager (and even root!) from editing and switching resolv.conf back to your isp's dns.
if you want to later on switch to other dns servers, run the following to unlock /etc/resolv.conf:

Code: Select all

chattr -i /etc/resolv.conf
note: the isc server is in california, so perhaps try opennic & see if you can get one closer if its speed isn't good enough:
go to https://opennic.org and it will tell you what your nearest server is.


if the dns change fails (and if you're using wifi), also consult this thread for some wifi tips: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=121696
i would have intermittent issues with my wifi until i customized my setup based on some of the suggestions in that thread and it's substantially more stable now.
i wouldn't recommend trying BOTH the dns & wifi changes at the same time. it would be better to test them separately, so you truly know the root of your initial problem.

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