Re: [uknof] Virgin Media DNS issues North London

2020-07-03 Thread Nick Hilliard

Matt Carlin wrote on 03/07/2020 15:48:
...And just after typing up the paragraph above, I'm able to ping 
151.101.192.81 (bbc.co.uk) with packets up to 1472 bytes, but no

higher. I still can't ping the name though.
1472 payload is what you would expect from an end-to-end MTU of 1500 
bytes, so it's unlikely to be an MTU problem.


There's a lot that can go wrong on cable systems. The usual problems 
relate to poor SNR due to cable plant faults.  These are very localised 
and will only affect small areas.  If there are more widespread issues, 
then there may be problems affecting connectivity into the head-end, 
which would be more generic layer 3 connectivity issues rather than 
anything specific to cable plant or the CMTS farm.


Nick



Re: [uknof] Virgin Media DNS issues North London

2020-07-03 Thread Matt Carlin
Hi Paul,

Thanks for reaching out. I actually got a message from Virgin this morning 
saying that they've got network engineers looking into the problem (better late 
than never I guess), so with any luck things will be back to normal soon.

But I just did a quick bit of testing and it doesn't seem like the size of the 
packets make a difference (literally going down to 1 byte from the default 
32...) At time of writing, I can't ping bbc.co.uk at all with any sized 
packets, but pinging uknof.org.uk works with any sized packets.

...And just after typing up the paragraph above, I'm able to ping 
151.101.192.81 (bbc.co.uk) with packets up to 1472 bytes, but no higher. I 
still can't ping the name though.


Cheers,

Matt

From: Paul Bone 
Sent: 03 July 2020 15:26
To: Matt Carlin 
Cc: uknof@lists.uknof.org.uk 
Subject: Re: [uknof] Virgin Media DNS issues North London

Hi Matt,

That sounds suspiciously like an MTU issue in the Virgin Media Network - I had 
this happen to one of my core network links when VM made a mistake on a 
configuration change.

Have you tried checking the size of pings you can send to various IPv4 
addresses without fragmentation?

I can't help you get in touch with Virgin Media though I'm afraid!

Paul

On Fri, 3 Jul 2020 at 15:19, Matt Carlin  wrote:
Evening all,

I hope an email of this nature is allowed, but I apologise if it's not (though 
I would still appreciate the help!)

I'm hoping to bring to someone's attention a network issue which started Sunday 
evening and is affecting parts of North London (N13, N14, N21 and 
surroundings). I work in IT so I consider myself to be quite technical, but 
there's only so much I can do as a consumer in this situation and I don't know 
anyone who works for Virgin.

My suspicion - based on our symptoms - is that there's a localised DNS or 
routing issue affecting the areas I mentioned. Symptoms include slow or failing 
DNS resolution and slow or failing connections to a range of servers/services 
(WebEx, Zoom, Discord, my Citrix desktop using Citrix Workspace). Actual 
download speeds, latency, and jitter all seem fine when I use speed test 
websites (when I manage to get onto them), and I can download large files at 
full speeds (when I manage to establish a connection to the server). Using 
different DNS settings on my devices does not work (verified by other people), 
but using a VPN to tunnel out of Virgin's network does mostly get around the 
DNS resolution and connection issues (also verified by other people), albeit 
not perfect. The fact that using a VPN gets around the issues for the most part 
is why I think it's DNS/routing, but I'm not a network engineer so I'm happy to 
be better educated on the subject.

Dozens - if not hundreds - of people are complaining about these issues on 
social media and the Virgin Media forums, but the complaints are falling on 
deaf ears. Customer service reps try to connect to our Virgin hubs and see them 
offline when they are actually very much online - but this is because of the 
aforementioned issues. They did put out an incident number for the area on 
Tuesday, but I was told that an "engineer" went out to investigate and couldn't 
see any problems, so they lifted the incident status... I continue bashing my 
head against a wall trying to get these issues properly escalated to a team 
that can actually troubleshoot DNS and networking problems, but no one seems 
interested in hearing what I'm saying.

I sincerely apologise for the ranty nature of my email, but it's been an 
extremely frustrating experience, especially while trying to work from home in 
these times. I'm just reaching out to see if there's anyone here who works for 
Virgin Media, or knows someone who does, and if they'd be kind enough to look 
into these issues on behalf of myself and several post code's worth of people 
in North London.

I'm happy to be contacted off list if anyone fancies reaching out.

Thank you for reading.

Matt  Carlin



--
Paul Bone
Network Consultant

PMB Technology


Re: [uknof] Telehouse West

2020-07-03 Thread Brandon Butterworth
On Fri Jul 03, 2020 at 02:44:37PM +0100, Brandon Butterworth wrote:
> I tried off list (I don't like to advertise on list) but
> you have a little mail problem
> 
> host mx2.orbital.net [80.88.212.170]
> SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
> 550 The sending IP (85.158.43.12) is listed on https://spamrl.com as a 
> source of viruses.

Doh. I have a little mail problem.

brandon



Re: [uknof] Virgin Media DNS issues North London

2020-07-03 Thread Paul Bone
Hi Matt,

That sounds suspiciously like an MTU issue in the Virgin Media Network - I
had this happen to one of my core network links when VM made a mistake on a
configuration change.

Have you tried checking the size of pings you can send to various IPv4
addresses without fragmentation?

I can't help you get in touch with Virgin Media though I'm afraid!

Paul

On Fri, 3 Jul 2020 at 15:19, Matt Carlin  wrote:

> Evening all,
>
> I hope an email of this nature is allowed, but I apologise if it's not
> (though I would still appreciate the help!)
>
> I'm hoping to bring to someone's attention a network issue which started
> Sunday evening and is affecting parts of North London (N13, N14, N21 and
> surroundings). I work in IT so I consider myself to be quite technical, but
> there's only so much I can do as a consumer in this situation and I don't
> know anyone who works for Virgin.
>
> My suspicion - based on our symptoms - is that there's a localised DNS or
> routing issue affecting the areas I mentioned. Symptoms include slow or
> failing DNS resolution and slow or failing connections to a range of
> servers/services (WebEx, Zoom, Discord, my Citrix desktop using Citrix
> Workspace). Actual download speeds, latency, and jitter all seem fine when
> I use speed test websites (when I manage to get onto them), and I can
> download large files at full speeds (when I manage to establish a
> connection to the server). Using different DNS settings on my devices does
> not work (verified by other people), but using a VPN to tunnel out of
> Virgin's network does mostly get around the DNS resolution and connection
> issues (also verified by other people), albeit not perfect. The fact that
> using a VPN gets around the issues for the most part is why I think it's
> DNS/routing, but I'm not a network engineer so I'm happy to be better
> educated on the subject.
>
> Dozens - if not hundreds - of people are complaining about these issues on
> social media and the Virgin Media forums, but the complaints are falling on
> deaf ears. Customer service reps try to connect to our Virgin hubs and see
> them offline when they are actually very much online - but this is because
> of the aforementioned issues. They did put out an incident number for the
> area on Tuesday, but I was told that an "engineer" went out to investigate
> and couldn't see any problems, so they lifted the incident status... I
> continue bashing my head against a wall trying to get these issues properly
> escalated to a team that can actually troubleshoot DNS and networking
> problems, but no one seems interested in hearing what I'm saying.
>
> I sincerely apologise for the ranty nature of my email, but it's been an
> extremely frustrating experience, especially while trying to work from home
> in these times. I'm just reaching out to see if there's anyone here who
> works for Virgin Media, or knows someone who does, and if they'd be kind
> enough to look into these issues on behalf of myself and several post
> code's worth of people in North London.
>
> I'm happy to be contacted off list if anyone fancies reaching out.
>
> Thank you for reading.
>
> Matt  Carlin
>
>

-- 
Paul Bone
Network Consultant

PMB Technology


[uknof] Virgin Media DNS issues North London

2020-07-03 Thread Matt Carlin
Evening all,

I hope an email of this nature is allowed, but I apologise if it's not (though 
I would still appreciate the help!)

I'm hoping to bring to someone's attention a network issue which started Sunday 
evening and is affecting parts of North London (N13, N14, N21 and 
surroundings). I work in IT so I consider myself to be quite technical, but 
there's only so much I can do as a consumer in this situation and I don't know 
anyone who works for Virgin.

My suspicion - based on our symptoms - is that there's a localised DNS or 
routing issue affecting the areas I mentioned. Symptoms include slow or failing 
DNS resolution and slow or failing connections to a range of servers/services 
(WebEx, Zoom, Discord, my Citrix desktop using Citrix Workspace). Actual 
download speeds, latency, and jitter all seem fine when I use speed test 
websites (when I manage to get onto them), and I can download large files at 
full speeds (when I manage to establish a connection to the server). Using 
different DNS settings on my devices does not work (verified by other people), 
but using a VPN to tunnel out of Virgin's network does mostly get around the 
DNS resolution and connection issues (also verified by other people), albeit 
not perfect. The fact that using a VPN gets around the issues for the most part 
is why I think it's DNS/routing, but I'm not a network engineer so I'm happy to 
be better educated on the subject.

Dozens - if not hundreds - of people are complaining about these issues on 
social media and the Virgin Media forums, but the complaints are falling on 
deaf ears. Customer service reps try to connect to our Virgin hubs and see them 
offline when they are actually very much online - but this is because of the 
aforementioned issues. They did put out an incident number for the area on 
Tuesday, but I was told that an "engineer" went out to investigate and couldn't 
see any problems, so they lifted the incident status... I continue bashing my 
head against a wall trying to get these issues properly escalated to a team 
that can actually troubleshoot DNS and networking problems, but no one seems 
interested in hearing what I'm saying.

I sincerely apologise for the ranty nature of my email, but it's been an 
extremely frustrating experience, especially while trying to work from home in 
these times. I'm just reaching out to see if there's anyone here who works for 
Virgin Media, or knows someone who does, and if they'd be kind enough to look 
into these issues on behalf of myself and several post code's worth of people 
in North London.

I'm happy to be contacted off list if anyone fancies reaching out.

Thank you for reading.

Matt  Carlin



Re: [uknof] Telehouse West

2020-07-03 Thread Brandon Butterworth
I tried off list (I don't like to advertise on list) but
you have a little mail problem

host mx2.orbital.net [80.88.212.170]
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
550 The sending IP (85.158.43.12) is listed on https://spamrl.com as a 
source of viruses.

On Fri Jul 03, 2020 at 12:47:38PM +, Benjamin A. Doherty wrote:
> Is anyone on list able to provide a basic internet connection
> with 1 useable IP in Telehouse West for use as an out of band
> management service. We will get Telehouse to run an Ethernet cable.

We've done that though now TH want to stop copper it gets more
expensive to provide

regards
brandon



[uknof] Telehouse West

2020-07-03 Thread Benjamin A. Doherty
Hi All,
 
Is anyone on list able to provide a basic internet connection with 1 useable IP 
in Telehouse West for use
as an out of band management service. We will get Telehouse to run an Ethernet 
cable. Happy to pay or
offer some reciprocal service somewhere  

Feel free to contact me off-list
 
Warm Regards,
Ben Doherty

Ben Doherty | Director | Orbital Net Ltd  |  www.orbital.net
DDI: 01227 668 902   Mobile: 07977078556