odd lack of some internet connectivity

[aonoraha at gmail.com (Aaron Appelbaum)]

Robin,

Could this be related to your issue? 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2333750,00.asp
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Sprint-Nextel-Severs-Its-Internet/story.aspx?guid={2971C78E-2F27-4B28-8878-F750FEA999C3}

On Mon, 2008-11-03 at 13:15 +0000, Robin Wood wrote:
> Hi
> See if anyone can help me with this weird problem ...
>
> I've just been to see a friend at his company as he was complaining
> about not being able to access certain websites or certain parts of
> sites that used to work fine. My first thought was browser or local
> firewall problem so I took my laptop along to eliminate the
> possibility of that being the fault.
>
> After some playing we found a couple of sites (hotmail and part of the
> Ryan Air booking system) that just timed out when we tried to access
> them, this was through my laptop and through their machines. I've just
> tried the same sites 10 mins later at home and they are working fine
> so it isn't that the sites aren't down. I also tried hitting the site
> through netcat and again, it just timed out.
>
> It isn't a http vs https issue as I successfully visited a number of
> sites of both types.
>
> It isn't even just web traffic, the ftp connection they use to publish
> their website allowed us to login and get a directory listing of the
> root directory and change into a subdirectory but getting a directory
> listing of that directory timed out. The same connection works fine
> from my friends home network so it isn't a permissions issue.
>
> I'm at a loss of what to suggest, they are using smoothwall express v2
> between their switch and modem but that hasn't been updated for months
> so is unlikely to be the cause, just in case it was playing up we
> tried rebooting it and the problem still persisted.
>
> The problem has been happening for over a month now but nothing has
> been changed in a lot longer than that so it shouldn't be a config
> issue.
>
> I've suggested talking to their ISP (BT) to see if they can suggest
> anything. Has anyone here got any suggestions of what to try, I'm
> completely stumped!
>
> Robin
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