[SOLVED] Hop Out for 2 Months - What to do?

[Verdipro]

There has been a hop out on the west coast since January 6th. It is outside of my web hosts network, so they haven't been able to do anything about it. Downloading large files that used to take 4-5 hours to complete, now take 5+ days & is still not even completed yet!

I called the Level 3 company, who I believe controlled the hop, but they mentioned it was an issue for my ISP to resolve. 11 hours later the issue is still not resolve. I have had my ISP reach out to me looking for trace routes which I provided. They acknowledged seeing the issue & it has been quiet ever since & that was 3 weeks ago.

What are my options here?

 

[Ralston18]

No sure about your post.

If I understand correctly you have someone hosting a website for you and your downloads from that website are very slow - correct? Or does the source website belong to someone else?

Overall, your options are very likely quite limited.

Being totally dependent on one "hop" would be rare.

Normally web traffic gets routed around "outages". So if some particular "hop" is out of service, then traffic through that route simply gets rerouted. (And packets often take different paths anyway even without outages. Depends on traffic congestion and available bandwidth.)

January 6th: Could be a serious problem somewhere involving physical damages due to fires, floods, storms, etc.. The west coast has had multiple disasters over the last few months.

May take awhile to get replacement equipment, restore power, maybe a new building.

For the most part if the problem is not within your network or your ISP's network there is not much you can do about it. If you are paying for the hosting or paying to use the source website then you may have some leverage.

If there is anything to be done per se the responsible company is only going to respond to larger customers who are being affected by the lost "hop" and/or paying in some manner.

 

[Verdipro]

@Ralston18 thank you for your info.

That is correct, I have server on the west coast (I am on the east coast). If I run a trace route to any site on that server or with that hosting company there is a hop that has been out since January 6th. It is also present if I try other hosting companies in that area as well.

For the most part things run ok, but specifically downloading large files takes forever. But I have yet to see that hop working again since that date.

Who would the issue really fall with? Is it an ISP issue? Or is it something that even they can't control? My web host has said it is out of their network so there was nothing they can do.

 

[Ralston18]

The answer is probably two-fold: who owns/manages that "hop" and what is that entities' status?

And why your traffic is always routing (if that is indeed the case) through that hop is a question that needs to be addressed. Something would need to be hard-coded/configured to have that happen.

Maybe tries, fails, and eventually gets re-routed in some time consuming process: perhaps for every packet being downloaded.

Could even be some sort of honey pot device that has been slipped into the infrastructure... Or just some gross mismanagement or maintenance failure. All speculation on my part.

I am not a person prone to speculate per se but I am willing to raise questions and maybe crawl out on limb to some extent.

More insight needed.

There are several well-established Forum members herein who are fully versed in such things.

Overall, I will have to defer to other's who may chose to reply and comment.

 

[Verdipro]

ok thank you for the info @Ralston18. I have also tried a trace route from a different computer, in another location within town & same issue. The only same factor was that both location use the same ISP. I can try from an entirely different location on a different ISP as well at some point.

 

[bill001g]

I am somewhat surprised you even got to talk to a person at level3. But as they likely told you YOU are not their customer possibly your ISP is. It could be that there are other ISP in the chain between level3 and your ISP.

The problem is may not be that simple though. The traffic going to a site many times follows a different path than the traffic returning. ISP tend to try to keep the traffic in their network as long as possible. So it might actually cross between ISP in different cities.

You can dig around some ISP routers with a tool called lookingglass. Not all ISP have it available but many of the big ones do.

Maybe you get lucky and can point out exactly which router or which interface on a router is causing the issue. Many ISP you can guess this information from the DNS names.

ISP constantly run monitoring software. The large ones have large teams of people that sit and watch large displays that show things like network usage and latency. Pretty much nodes go red on their screens when there is a issue. If the problem truly is in level3 network I would be very surprised they do not know about it. Before they were purchased they were the largest provider of international fiber in the world.

What may have happened is your traffic is running on a backup path becuase the main one has issues. They normally fix these quickly but some times it takes a long time. There have been cases of ships cutting undersea fiber or a tanker truck that burned a bridge so badly they had to replace the bridge and since the fiber ran over the bridge they had to wait for the new bridge.

 

[Verdipro]

@bill001g thank you for all of that info.

Yeah I am fairly persistent once I saw how long the issue was prolonging & how this downloading task hasn't been able to be performed.

Yeah level3 was pretty helpful & talked with me for a few minutes even though he couldn't help. What he did say was he used to work for comcast & he told me what to ask for at comcast which was "National Level Repair Services - Level 3".

I had to relay all the info to regular comcast support, which they chatted thru the computer with level3. Ultimately level3 at comcast did call me back, but I missed the call. They provided an email address for me to send my trace route to. They acknowledged the issue after I sent the trace route, but that was the last I heard.

Never got any info on how long it will take, who controls it, and what the issue currently is.

So its kind of left me in a stuck pattern & simple few hour download tasks won't even complete in 5 straight days of running.

 

[bill001g]

Can the provider of the web hosting change you ip to a completely different block. Sometimes they advertise certain blocks into different ISP with different weights.

 

[Verdipro]

Can the provider of the web hosting change you ip to a completely different block. Sometimes they advertise certain blocks into different ISP with different weights.

I can certainly check on that. From everything they told me so far it was out of their control, but I can ask specifically about different blocks. I have tried trace routes on their main website, as well as other websites that are on different servers that they host & I have the same issue.