An odd network problem

[elana]

Hey folks, I'm wondering if anybody here might have an idea of what could cause the problem I'm seeing on my network. Wednesday night, my DSL went down for several hours but was working when I tried to use it the following morning.

Later Thursday evening, I log on and try to use the Internet and find it's working mostly but every maybe 10-15 minutes, I lose my connection briefly for maybe 30 seconds to a minute. Then it comes back. The very odd part is that the connection doesn't completely die. I can still use an ICMP ping and ping the gateway and external networks, but TCP stops working. SO like connections to instant messenger, game servers, etc, will all die but I can still ping.

Since this all started happening after a DSL outage I suspect it was the DSL line. I called and the tech was about as baffled as I was by the problem. He saw that there was a decent if not high amount of upstream traffic from my network. So he suggested maybe I had a worm on my network. After doing some security checks and some network sniffing though I see no evidence of such.

Any suggestions as to what could cause this?

[BuzzEvil]

I am guessing a new worm that is not yet known about by the antivirus companies. As you know antivirus progs only search for virus definitions.

Most likely though you are being targetted by ol doubleya's men because you agreed with me the other day in a post and of course they are monitoring me cuz i am a disgruntled foreign.

[elana]

Most likely though you are being targetted by ol doubleya's men because you agreed with me the other day in a post and of course they are monitoring me cuz i am a disgruntled foreign.

Dude, I helped plan a convention for bloggers associated with the largest liberal blog in the country. I'm already on their shit list :)

[BuzzEvil]

Most likely though you are being targetted by ol doubleya's men because you agreed with me the other day in a post and of course they are monitoring me cuz i am a disgruntled foreign.

Dude, I helped plan a convention for bloggers associated with the largest liberal blog in the country. I'm already on their shit list :)

Sure but that is a political shit list. The ppl who I aluded to are far more insidious. They sit in dark rooms and monitor tonnes of data and decide to give guns to terrorists because they are fighting other terrorists that they hate even more.

[DennisTheMenace]

Most likely though you are being targetted by ol doubleya's men because you agreed with me the other day in a post and of course they are monitoring me cuz i am a disgruntled foreign.

Dude, I helped plan a convention for bloggers associated with the largest liberal blog in the country. I'm already on their shit list :)

Sure but that is a political shit list. The ppl who I aluded to are far more insidious. They sit in dark rooms and monitor tonnes of data and decide to give guns to terrorists because they are fighting other terrorists that they hate even more.
You will be taken care of.


Elana if its still happening are you behind a linksys router? The firmware updates on linksys usualy fixs quirky dropouts customers experince.

[elana]

Elana if its still happening are you behind a linksys router? The firmware updates on linksys usualy fixs quirky dropouts customers experince.

Negear Switch and D-Link Router. Nope.

It's a chicago area problem. My friend is having the exact same issue.

[BuzzEvil]

Elana if its still happening are you behind a linksys router? The firmware updates on linksys usualy fixs quirky dropouts customers experince.

Negear Switch and D-Link Router. Nope.

It's a chicago area problem. My friend is having the exact same issue.

It's all those bloody bridges. Everytime one goes up a connection is broken. :P

[LuckYx]

Canada's fault.

[elana]

So my problem continues and hence why I've not been playing much in the way of on-line games. The constant drops make it rather irritating. I talked with Speakeasy and apparently the problem is really random.

All of their DSL lines in Chicago go through an ERX which is this:

http://www.juniper.net/products/eseries/

It's basically a big chassis with a ton of routers in it. So the problem is totally intermittent, like not just happening sporadically but also affecting sporadic ports. Like you might have telnet but not HTTP. It's happening to a seemingly random array of customers on an array of different routers within the ERX.

So they are trying to diagnose it, but given it's an issue that happens sporadically to a only some of the people in the Chicago area and even when it's not working it's level of not workingness is sporadic, it might be a while. Lovely.

[rev]

Your list of symptoms are prevalent with a misconfigured router or switch.

[elana]

Your list of symptoms are prevalent with a misconfigured router or switch.

Yeah, my bet is that it's an authentication problem. The ERX system handles that for the entire network. The authentication determines what you get access to so I'd guess they are having problems getting authenticated sporadically and it's causing failures to happen.

*shrug*

Hopefully I'll find out eventually :)

[rev]

Your list of symptoms are prevalent with a misconfigured router or switch.

Yeah, my bet is that it's an authentication problem. The ERX system handles that for the entire network. The authentication determines what you get access to so I'd guess they are having problems getting authenticated sporadically and it's causing failures to happen.

*shrug*

Hopefully I'll find out eventually :)

Look and see if you have some sort of policy or agreement that refers to an agreed SLA in your service contract. Bring it up to your provider if you find that you have one.

[elana]

Look and see if you have some sort of policy or agreement that refers to an agreed SLA in your service contract. Bring it up to your provider if you find that you have one.

Oh I'll twist their arms into a discount, fear not. I don't have an SLA that i'm aware of, but I think having a week of this is worth a little bit back.

[rev]

Look and see if you have some sort of policy or agreement that refers to an agreed SLA in your service contract. Bring it up to your provider if you find that you have one.

Oh I'll twist their arms into a discount, fear not. I don't have an SLA that i'm aware of, but I think having a week of this is worth a little bit back.

I had Speakeasy way back when, and they did a pretty decent job. Here's to hoping you get it all worked out in a timely manner.