nanog mailing list archives

Re: Single IP routing problems through Level3


From: "Rubens Kuhl Jr." <rubensk () gmail com>
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 11:12:25 -0300

1) I've seen this behavior before; you are not alone in the universe.
2) Most likely there is a balanced channel on the path, either L3 or
L2, and one of the links in the bundle is dead but has not been
detected as such.


Rubens


On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Matt Palmer <mpalmer () hezmatt org> wrote:
We're seeing some really weird issues with connections that go through / to
Level3 IP space.  Basically, certain "pairs" of IPs (particular L3 IPs
coupled with particular IPs of ours) have dodgy/nonexistent connectivity,
but if you change the IP at either end everything's hunky dory.

I've sniffed (from both ends) pings going from a host in L3 space to our end
and seen the pings arrive at our end and head back in the direction of L3,
but they never get to their destination.  Traceroutes from L3 stop at the
next-to-last hop, while traceroutes back get to the hop before L3 space and
stop.

All of this behaviour is source/dest *pair* specific -- if I ping/traceroute
from another address (in the same netblock as the problematic IP, so all the
same equipment is involved) at either end, or to another address (again,
same netblock) at either end, it all works again.

I've got two questions:

1) Has anyone else seen similar behaviour from L3 (or other providers,
  even), so I know I'm not going mad?

2) What sort of configuration problem or software bug would cause this sort
  of problem to occur?  If it was an IP blacklist (or even a block routing
  issue) anywhere along the line, surely it wouldn't be sensitive to
  changing the other end's address to another one in the same /24?

Any insight/anecdotes/etc would be greatly appreciated, as it's starting to
do my head in.  Just knowing I'm not alone with this insanity would be nice
at this point.  <grin>

If it makes any difference, the blocks I'm working from at my end are
Internap, in 74.201.254.0/23 (we don't have all of it, just most of it),
while the far end is 8.12.35.0/24.

- Matt




Current thread: