[ale] OT Routing Breakdown.

[mike at trausch.us]

On 11/02/2012 05:24 PM, Bob Kruger wrote:
> I am sorry if this is OT, but I am hoping that someone in the ALE has
> experience in solving the following problem.
>
> I maitain a site that is run right outside of Boston.  About 600 people
> access the site from around the world.  Starting Saturday past, the site
> became unreachable to over 200 users both in the United States and
> worldwide.  The problem was most prevalent with AT&T subscribers, but
> that may be due to the sheer number of people who use AT&T.  At first
> the hosting service told me that AT&T was blocking the site. However,
> conversations with AT&T level two tech support confirmed that it was not
> blocked by them.  There had been some reports of SPAM, but that was
> traced down to the emails that can be sent out when a user forgets their
> password.  Some systems reject emails from "Webmaster".
>
> There seems to be a routing breakdown somewhere,  A user in California
> did a traceroute to the system, and was able to take a snapshot of where
> the routing broke down.  Neither AT&T nor the hosting service state that
> this is their responsibility to pursue.
>
> So, how does one go about fixing a routing problem?

That depends on where the routing problem was found.

Your best bet would be to get multiple traceroutes that show the 
failure.  Then you can (hopefully) see that there is a single point that 
is in common between all the traceroutes.  At that point, you need to 
contact whoever is the operator of the final system before the break 
(since you have no way to know what system comes after the break...) and 
work with them to let them know that they are having an issue with one 
of their network links.

That is, of course, easier said than done.  My bet is that you're going 
to find that the road to resolution in this case is going to be a long 
and frustrating one.

I've only ever had success in getting someone to fix routing problems 
when the routing problems originate (or appear to originate) from my own 
ISP.  I've not had any circumstances where I've needed to do anything 
else, as yet.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                    --- Carveth Read, “Logic”