This site was inaccessible for the last three days. Anyone else had this problem?

I have been accessing this site for many many years with no problems other than this one. In fact I have always been greastly impressed with the performance of the server where Flightsim is based.

But three days ago, a problem started. I could not get in at all. Chrome reported timeouts and resets. Now until I retired I had been a computer systems and networking engineer for nearly three decades, so I ran what limited diagnostics Windows provides:

"ping" got here and returned in the usual time.

"tracert" got here and returned in less than 20 hops in the usual time.

Both of Telstra's DNS servers were active and responsive. This is sadly not that common, and the source of many network issues in Oz. So obviously this was not a problem in this issue.

During this time, I was able to access servers all over the world - Facebook, CNN, ABC (Oz), BBC, MSN, many others - with no issues whatsoever. Email was also working with no problems.

I have of course made no changes to anything hardware or software wise on my home network installation.

"telnet xx.xx.xx.xx 80" (where xx.xx.xx.xx is flightsim's IP) timed out. Other than the symptom itself, this was the only indication of a problem.

This problem had also occurred a few weeks ago, but only for the one day.

My wife also shares this internet connection, and she visits a far wider range of sites than I do, and reports no issues during that time.

Now (obviously) everything is working again.

Has anyone else ever seen such issues?

No problems at all from Verizon - the site has been normally reachable.

DJ

I've dropped by every day with no problems. Could be an issue with your ISP.

You can check with sites such as websitedown or notopening.com to see if the site is functional. (a search for "is xxx down", xxx=site name, will get a list of such sites)

Hi,

Normally I don't think about loading time but over the last couple of days I was aware of it. I'm not certain but I may have attempted a reload. I believe there was some sort of problem but I was always able to get in.

Jim F.

Byt a process of elimination ...

- My wife and I could get to a large variety of other sites without problems, as always, so it is highly unlikely the problem is with our setup.

- Everyone here who has commented could get in to flightsim, so it is unlikely that the problem is here, either.

- The only place left is "The Internet" in between. Maybe my ISP, maybe the routers and stuff in between.

Just for the record (the second shows no downtime since May 30):

http://notopening.com/site/flightsim.com.html

http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/flightsim.com.html

About 6-8 months ago I would encounter this condition where I couldn't connect to Flightsim.com but other sites worked perfectly. I also did the "ping" and "tracert" tests and no problem with them.

I finally did a malware scan with Malwarebytes and Superantispyware, then did a reboot and that seemed to take care of it. Never did figure out what the cause was!

- The only place left is "The Internet" in between. Maybe my ISP, maybe the routers and stuff in between.

You've managed to rule out the transport layer end-to-end, but nothing above it. You were a networking engineer, what does that suggest to you?

Cheers!

Luke

Luke, the symptoms still suggest to me a routing problem. I moved here 3 months ago, have seen the problem here twice, had never seen it in over a decade at my previous house. I see that as a "clue".

I had seen this thing when I was an active neteng, many times. The problem in those days was usually that the routing A -> B was correct, but routing B -> A was not.

I hadn't explained myself very well. My reason for reporting it was to see whether anyone else had seen the same problem. Had they done so, then I could have investigated what the problem sites all had in common. But no one has come forward, so that leaves me on my Pat Malone. And like most people, I am not good at extrapolating from a single example :D

Luke, the symptoms still suggest to me a routing problem. ... I had seen this thing when I was an active neteng, many times. The problem in those days was usually that the routing A -> B was correct, but routing B -> A was not.

But you said in your first post that pings and traceroutes worked correctly, so the routing at the IP level was correct. My guess is that something was blocking you at the application level; maybe the snooping filters were having an off day. :)

Cheers!

Luke

It's been a while, but I seem to recall that routing for ICMP stuff like traceroute and ping is not the same as routing for TCP stuff.

The point is moot. The objective of posting this problem here - to see whether anyone else has seen the problem - has been achieved. And no-one else here has seen the problem. So it drops off this site's radar.

And no-one else here has seen the problem.

Ah, my newly installed Romulan cloaking device must be working!:rolleyes:

.... I moved here 3 months ago, have seen the problem here twice, had never seen it in over a decade at my previous house. ...

Not uncommon for a new account/location. I swapped ISP from ATT to TW last November; it took five service calls over three months before everything worked reliably (I joked with the CSR that if their techs spent much more time in my apartment they were going to chip in on the rent).