Nyetwork, again

[cmdr_zoom]

Lately, my net has been intermittently bad. Tonight, it's really bad. I'm hoping someone out there can shed some light on the problem.


First attempt:

Tracing route to livejournal.com [204.9.177.18] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     *        *      151 ms  10.0.0.1 
  2     *        *       86 ms  eugn-dsl-gw03-195.eugn.qwest.net [67.42.192.195] 
  3   857 ms    65 ms    66 ms  eugn-agw1.inet.qwest.net [67.42.192.125] 
  4   707 ms     *        *     egn-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.150.33] 
  5   695 ms     *      461 ms  egn-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.150.2] 
  6     *      367 ms   675 ms  stl-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.205.214] 
  7     *      346 ms   642 ms  sea-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.26.54] 
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *      305 ms   722 ms  0.so-7-3-0.XL1.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.105.18] 
 10   547 ms     *      395 ms  0.so-4-0-0.XL1.SFO4.ALTER.NET [152.63.55.65] 
 11  1031 ms     *        *     POS6-0.GW3.SFO4.ALTER.NET [152.63.51.133] 
 12     *        *      362 ms  sixapart-sfo-gw.customer.alter.net [63.65.129.6] 
 13  1055 ms     *        *     ve102.core2.tme.sixapart.com [204.9.176.20] 
 14   958 ms     *        *     livejournal.com [204.9.177.18] 
 15   378 ms   316 ms   326 ms  livejournal.com [204.9.177.18] 

Trace complete.

Second attempt:

Tracing route to livejournal.com [204.9.177.18] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1   596 ms     *      664 ms  10.0.0.1 
  2     *        *      469 ms  eugn-dsl-gw03-195.eugn.qwest.net [67.42.192.195] 
  3   774 ms   286 ms   489 ms  eugn-agw1.inet.qwest.net [67.42.192.125] 
  4   843 ms     *      309 ms  egn-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.150.33] 
  5   316 ms   793 ms     *     egn-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.150.2] 
  6   409 ms   424 ms   694 ms  stl-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.205.214] 
  7   459 ms   676 ms     *     sea-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.26.54] 
  8   714 ms     *      814 ms  POS2-3.BR1.SEA1.ALTER.NET [204.255.169.29] 
  9   144 ms   293 ms   219 ms  0.so-7-3-0.XL1.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.105.18] 
 10  1076 ms     *      767 ms  0.so-4-0-0.XL1.SFO4.ALTER.NET [152.63.55.65] 
 11   589 ms     *        *     POS6-0.GW3.SFO4.ALTER.NET [152.63.51.133] 
 12   779 ms   318 ms   468 ms  sixapart-sfo-gw.customer.alter.net [63.65.129.6] 
 13   443 ms   873 ms     *     ve102.core2.tme.sixapart.com [204.9.176.20] 
 14     *      732 ms  1132 ms  livejournal.com [204.9.177.18] 

Trace complete.

and just for variety, here's another site:

Tracing route to puzzlepirates.com [69.80.211.113] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     *      886 ms     *     10.0.0.1 
  2   577 ms   864 ms     *     eugn-dsl-gw03-195.eugn.qwest.net [67.42.192.195] 
  3   832 ms     *      236 ms  eugn-agw1.inet.qwest.net [67.42.192.125] 
  4   358 ms   559 ms   416 ms  egn-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.150.33] 
  5     *      119 ms   304 ms  egn-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.150.2] 
  6   766 ms     *      511 ms  stl-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.205.214] 
  7  1007 ms   519 ms     *     sea-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.26.54] 
  8   591 ms  1059 ms     *     POS2-3.BR1.SEA1.ALTER.NET [204.255.169.29] 
  9     *        *      450 ms  0.so-4-2-0.XL1.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.105.82] 
 10   400 ms   244 ms   323 ms  0.so-4-0-0.XL1.SFO4.ALTER.NET [152.63.55.65] 
 11   878 ms     *      919 ms  POS6-0.GW3.SFO4.ALTER.NET [152.63.51.133] 
 12   613 ms     *      814 ms  netoptex-gw.customer.alter.net [157.130.198.218] 
 13   680 ms     *      218 ms  core-01.ge-5-13.sfo1.gni.com [64.127.96.30] 
 14   683 ms     *      235 ms  router1.threerings.net [64.127.106.155] 
 15  router1.threerings.net [64.127.106.155]  reports: Destination host unreachable.

Trace complete.

Comments? Suggestions?

Comments

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

traceroute prints stars in the time columns when the time bewteen sending the probe packet and receiving the response packet takes more than 5 seconds (default; can be changed). Lots of intermittent stars in the first hop of each run tells me that there is a problem on your local network. You could have a loose connection somewhere or maybe a network port on a switch is failing. You could have a bad Ethernet patch cord. Those are the first things I would check and swap around if possible.

[ninjakitten]

Seconded. The ninjacritters concur. ;)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Much better today. I should ask the apartment manager if she poked the router, or what.

Tracing route to livejournal.com [204.9.177.18] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     4 ms     7 ms     1 ms  10.0.0.1 
  2    47 ms    47 ms    46 ms  eugn-dsl-gw03-195.eugn.qwest.net [67.42.192.195] 
  3    81 ms    52 ms    67 ms  eugn-agw1.inet.qwest.net [67.42.192.125] 
  4    53 ms    72 ms    60 ms  egn-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.150.33] 
  5    54 ms    54 ms    54 ms  egn-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.150.2] 
  6    60 ms    54 ms    57 ms  stl-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.205.214] 
  7    56 ms    64 ms    59 ms  sea-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.26.54] 
  8    53 ms    60 ms    52 ms  POS2-3.BR1.SEA1.ALTER.NET [204.255.169.29] 
  9    53 ms    57 ms    80 ms  0.so-7-3-0.XL1.SEA1.ALTER.NET [152.63.105.18] 
 10    73 ms    71 ms    83 ms  0.so-4-0-0.XL1.SFO4.ALTER.NET [152.63.55.65] 
 11    69 ms    65 ms    72 ms  POS6-0.GW3.SFO4.ALTER.NET [152.63.51.133] 
 12    91 ms    76 ms    76 ms  sixapart-sfo-gw.customer.alter.net [63.65.129.6] 
 13    81 ms    71 ms    86 ms  ve102.core2.tme.sixapart.com [204.9.176.20] 
 14   101 ms    87 ms   101 ms  livejournal.com [204.9.177.18] 

Trace complete.

[shadur.livejournal.com]

A tool you might want to pick up for diagnostics of this kind is winMTR - essentially traceroute on steroids in the same way that ethereal is tcpdump on steroids and then some.

But yeah, the stars are lost packets - meaning that somewhere along the route from you to there, something forgot to send it on (or back); the fact that you started losing packets at the first hop was a pretty clear sign that the router itself was being wonky.