Hops & Trace Routes…
It seems that I have had a lot to say about technology of late and I do apologize if that is not your thing. However, it has been on my mind a lot of late and especially with the recent ice storms and power outages here in central Kentucky I have all but lived and ate technology and reworking things to get by during the short-term and looking for long-term solutions to avoid issues in the future. With most of that getting behind us I was looking forward to some relaxation this weekend only to have my shared server space to become unavailable on Friday – which is hosted in sunny California. All of this living without the ready access of connectivity to friends and information has kind made me take a look at how dependent, almost like a drug, I am on the stuff and it has so fragile a supply.
Anyway, hops and routes and such is what caused the problem with my access to my website. And has further kept me from making my daily posts in a regular fashion today. As I am writing this initially I am just working in Wordpad with the intent of posting it up to the site when becomes available. In a situation when you can not get to a web server the first thought is the server is down, having issues, or perhaps DNS got messed up. So I started with bringing it to the hosts attention.
Mind you, I have never had issues with the hosting company until today. And I have to say they got two strikes today, though the third pitch did redeem them somewhat. First, I submitted a problem ticket in the online process stating the situation. After nearly four hours I still did have a response to the ticket at all – strike one. I called technical support and the guy had the customer service abilities of a monkey and the tact of four-year old. First, I was talked down to like I was a six-year-old who obviously could not understand the complexities of servers and networks and that I should just do what he says and really there was no problem at all and…
This was the point I said look, this going to get even uglier, let me talk to your supervisor. The supervisor and I worked through things like adults strangely enough, which is what people generally want when they have issues. Now, turns out, that indeed the server was up, running, and spitting out web content just fine. Yet I could not get it to at all. What gives?
Well, the internet as we know depends on various communications going on from various machines and network devices between here at there. The route that the path takes is something that we can trace along and see what is going on between here and there. If we trace that route, it is called a trace route. What you see in the trace route is various hops between different location between the various locations. (Interestingly, this is why you don’t want to send sensitive information in just clear text, who know who is watching?)
So anyway, a trace route of from here to my server in California was dropping on at hop thirteen, which when looking up the IP address was something (it seems) physically located in the Colorado. interestedly, hitting a different server in San Diego took sixteen hops and went through just fine. I tried connecting to my own server from four different ISP’s/starting locations and they all were going through the same connection point and failing.
My next initial thought was, no problem, I will hit a generic proxy-server somewhere and do it that way (as this is how I had verified the site was up anyway). However, the site may be viewed, but the authentication to get into the site to post does not work.
My next step is to call the ISP, who will bump it up the chain to get either something repaired and/or a route changed so it does not go through that location. But the quick of it is, I am completely at someone elses mercy of getting the site back up for folks here in central Kentucky and given the number of people who will be involved, it may be a few days.
Addendum: I am not sure exactly when, but sometime early Sunday morning it came back up and I am now able to get through. I am going to post this and date it for Friday as should have been.
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[...] West Coast servers a lot of time I time out at places in Colorado. (See my previous post about Hops and Trace Routes to know how I know that). No rhyme or reason that I can find, as it is not always the same [...]