Strange email problem

[NBD]

Beaten our webhosts (GoDaddy) and our ISP (True), so I thought I'd post here and see if anyone else has experienced something similar.

Our website and email seems to be disappearing sporadically. During these times the IP address won't return a ping via Command Prompt. Normally it comes back after about 20-30 mins, but now it's been down over an hour.

We have a headhunting firm run out of a small office (6 people) in Bangkok. We are sending on average around 20 emails each per day, all direct and no bulk mail.

We have a basic GoDaddy account with a static IP address. The static IP was an attempt to avoid getting caught in spam filters which seemed to be happening with shared hosting plans in the past.

We have moved hosts twice now and I'm generally impressed with GoDaddy's support, price etc so reluctant to move again.

Our ISP (True) don't seem to have any idea there is a problem. Other websites work fine during these down times. We have a small business, unlimited data plan, there's no heavy uploading or downloading going on, and most of the have plenty of bandwidth for what we use.

We're using a normal Cisco router, similar to the one I have at home.

Our email, website etc is also visible from mobile data during these episodes.

The problem appears to be between our ISP (or possibly our router?) and our IP, but it seems like no-one can figure out why this is happening or what we can do to stop it. If you need any more information please ask. I'm reluctant to post the domain name up here, lest my business is tarnished with the general rubbish I post elsewhere.

Thanks in advance.

[NBD]

A little bit of additional information - I've just tried the site from a free proxy and it works fine.

[chrisinth]

Have you had your connection cables (telephone line) checked from your router outbound?

During your email/website downtime, can you ping your router IP?

The reason I suggest checking your phone lines, a couple of years ago we had a reduced connection due to a faulty line, not quite the same as your problem but worth checking.

If you can connect through mobile devices or proxy during downtime, that to me would point at your ISP, or connection between yourself and ISP.

[NBD]

Haven't had things physically checked - I never really thought of it since everything else on the internet seems to be working fine.

I just spoke with the host again and they were adamant that this must be an ISP problem, even so. Speaking with the ISP now.

Thanks

[Jack Mountain]

I had the same problem that i couldn't reach certain websites, someone on this forum (Pib?) gave me the tip to use one of the following proxy servers. Problem solved. Maybe it works for you to.

proxy.trueinternet.co.th Port 8080

proxy.asianet.co.th Port 8080

[ubonjoe]

Moved to computers forum.

[NBD]

Seem to have solved the problem for now by pestering the hosts - it seems they're quite keen on blocking Thai IP addresses, and the way True configure their equipment makes this very likely.

Thanks for the help, and if anyone has any suggestions as to how to prevent this reoccuring then they would be gratefully received.

[happynthailand]

use " Tor.org" free program it does away with your thai ip address

[wym]

You need to find a decent hosting provider.

GoDaddy is well-known as a very very terrible one.

Of course you have to pay for quality.

Spend some time browsing webhostingtalk and you'll get a feel for whose opinions you can respect as opposed to the self-promoting BS artists.

[RichCor]

Since this directly concerns your business, if it were me I'd want to know how widespread and for whom the outage was for. You mentioned that using a proxy or mobile 3G you can access both email and your hosted web site.

I'd suggest this is a DNS or a DNS/Router issue with your ISP (True). Normally the DNS (similar to a telephone directory, converting url names to IP numbers) is updated periodically but frequently to keep it current so if one creates new url name, or moves an existing one to a new host, it can be found soon enough at it's new IP location. Especially so when you move it to a new host. It's possible that there's an issue during the update.

Some testing needs to be done to establish the possible cause.

1. When the site is unreachable via True, does it affect other True customers as well? Are other Internet users (Thai ISP's or other) lose access to your domain?

2. Try changing the second DNS entry on your True Router, maybe use a google DNS server (8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4) and see if the backup (non-true) dns server also fails.

3. What company holds the master record for your domain. Quite possibly, if there are TWO companies or master record holders, they both are sending competing DNS record updates, each knocking out the data from the other.

3a. IS there any difference in the WHOIS or DNS record return on your True service during the outage. Maybe listing different data or IP during the outage?

4. Something else is affecting True's DNS and causing the url record to become invalid. But why affect only True?

5. Could be a router table being periodically updated and failing to route your url/IP address correctly, but then corrects itself?

Some tools:

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx comprehensive dns and mx web-based diagnostic tools
http://startping.com/ (ping online from multiple locations)
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

[RichCor]

Seem to have solved the problem for now by pestering the hosts - it seems they're quite keen on blocking Thai IP addresses, and the way True configure their equipment makes this very likely.

Thanks for the help, and if anyone has any suggestions as to how to prevent this reoccuring then they would be gratefully received.

If this is truly the case, you can disregard my previous post.

If you are hosting the service in the US and a router or service in the US is blocking THAI bearing IP addresses, there isn't a lot you can do about it, other than using a proxy or VPN service to jump around the issue.

Though it then does seem odd that the outage would only be for a certain period and then clear up, unless the block of THAI IP addresses was put in place during an active/ongoing Denial-Of-Service attack and then the block was lifted to allow legitimate traffic through. Then, why only block True IP addresses. Strange.

--

Ever thought of using additional Thai-based servers with data synchronized with your US hosted servers? Then if the US server is unreachable the traffic would flow to the additional Thai-based server. Just a thought, especially if you have potential clients here in Thailand experiencing the same periodic outage when trying to contact you.

[NBD]

Thanks guys.

Happy

interesting work around but not sure it's practical for the whole office.

Rich

It seems like what happened yesterday was that my FTP client made mutliple login attempts with incorrect details and this caused my host to believe it was an attack, so blocked our specific IP, rather than True as a whole. That was my mess up as I was using FTP yesterday, but the ongoing problems remain a bit of a mystery. No repitition of the problem today though, so let's hope it's cleared up now.

The website being down isn't such a big issue, as we're not an ecommerce site or anything, but the email being down is a real pain. Would it be possible/feasible to have that locally hosted? And would this solve the problem?

We've moved hosts a few times in the last couple of years and to give them their due GoDaddy's support is generally excellent compared to the others.

We have had a look at more business orientated hosting and the expense isn't prohibitive but I want to be very sure this solves the problem.

thanks again