Distrowatch website

I haven't been able to get on to the distrowatch website for a few weeks now. I have tried Windows 10, Linux and Android smartphone. None of them will connect. I can connect from my works office and when my phone is set to mobile broadband. A friend has been round a couple of times and he cannot connect to distrowatch on his laptop at my house, but when he goes home he can connect immediately from the same laptop.
I just wondered if anyone else on Zen has the same problem before I contact Zen support?

I tried to post this question on the official Zen forums, but just got a permission denied message!

Nigel

This website? https://distrowatch.com/ Works fine here.

Yes works fine here as well.

Thank you for testing.

This is very odd. I will have to do some more investigation.

Nigel

Site works fine to me also.

Have you tried doing a lookup of the domain, ping it's IP and also trace routing to the server like shown below:

NSLookup:

# nslookup distrowatch.com

Server:  dns.google
Address:  2001:4860:4860::8888

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    distrowatch.com
Addresses:  2a00:9080:1:20c::1
          82.103.136.226

Ping:

# ping -4 distrowatch.com

Pinging distrowatch.com [82.103.136.226] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 82.103.136.226: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.103.136.226: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.103.136.226: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=52
Reply from 82.103.136.226: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 82.103.136.226:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 19ms, Average = 19ms

Trace Route:

# tracert -4 distrowatch.com

Tracing route to distrowatch.com [82.103.136.226]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  YAZOO [192.168.2.253]
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  172.16.10.194
  3     3 ms     2 ms     2 ms  31.55.186.177
  4     3 ms     4 ms     3 ms  31.55.186.176
  5     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  195.99.127.102
  6     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  62.6.201.146
  7     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  213.137.183.32
  8     3 ms     2 ms     3 ms  ldn-b9-link.telia.net [213.248.97.50]
  9     3 ms     3 ms     3 ms  ldn-bb4-link.telia.net [62.115.116.240]
 10    16 ms    15 ms    15 ms  hbg-bb4-link.telia.net [62.115.122.160]
 11    19 ms    19 ms    19 ms  kbn-bb4-link.telia.net [213.155.135.121]
 12    21 ms    21 ms    21 ms  kbn-b3-link.telia.net [62.115.121.13]
 13    22 ms    22 ms    22 ms  easyspeedy-ic-305269-kbn-b3.c.telia.net [62.115.40.174]
 14    19 ms    20 ms    19 ms  e82-103-136-226s.easyspeedy.com [82.103.136.226]

Trace complete.

You might be able to find the issue.
If you cannot ping or trace route using the domain name (might be a DNS issue) you can use their IP which is "82.103.136.226"

Also the -4 argument tells them to use IPv4, I have to do this due to my stupid Security Suit.

Paul

I use Linux Manjaro and use a DNS forwarder (dnsmasq running on Raspberry Pi)

nslookup distrowatch.com
Server: 192.168.11.80
Address: 192.168.11.80#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: distrowatch.com
Address: 82.103.136.226
Name: distrowatch.com
Address: 2a00:9080:1:20c::1

===================

ping -c 4 -4 distrowatch.com
PING distrowatch.com (82.103.136.226) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- distrowatch.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 34ms

================

traceroute -4 distrowatch.com
traceroute to distrowatch.com (82.103.136.226), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 _gateway (192.168.11.1) 23.305 ms 22.516 ms 23.203 ms
2 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 23.802 ms 23.140 ms 23.113 ms
3 * * *
4 ae5-161.cr2.wh-man.zen.net.uk (62.3.86.13) 38.471 ms 43.032 ms 40.818 ms
5 * * *
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 ldn-b9-link.telia.net (62.115.169.134) 26.687 ms 25.219 ms 23.363 ms
9 ldn-bb4-link.telia.net (62.115.116.240) 30.782 ms 32.942 ms ldn-bb3-link.telia.net (62.115.117.6) 28.345 ms
10 hbg-bb4-link.telia.net (62.115.122.160) 36.202 ms 37.463 ms 38.567 ms
11 kbn-bb4-link.telia.net (213.155.135.121) 42.305 ms kbn-bb3-link.telia.net (213.155.130.101) 47.133 ms 49.225 ms
12 kbn-b3-link.telia.net (213.155.135.179) 43.050 ms kbn-b3-link.telia.net (80.91.252.23) 44.431 ms kbn-b3-link.telia.net (62.115.121.17) 45.299 ms
13 easyspeedy-ic-305269-kbn-b3.c.telia.net (62.115.40.174) 49.826 ms 47.554 ms 44.297 ms
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *
19 * * *
20 * * *
21 * * *
22 * * *
23 * * *
24 * * *
25 * * *
26 * * *
27 * * *
28 * * *
29 * * *
30 * * *

Nigel

Very odd that Paul's hop 13 and yours are identical. Yet his resolves on hop 14 and yours goes AWOL, with the same target address.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 23-Jul-19 20:00:10)

Yeah its odd, I thought it was a routing issue, so maybe Zen are having some issues, maybe somebody else using Zen could check.

*** update ***
Also hop 13 looks like its the link between Telia's network and Easyspeedy's network, so might be an issue between them which is also odd due to its fine for me, maybe the OP IP is blacklisted and easyspeedy is blocking them?

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Tue 23-Jul-19 20:15:23)

I wondered if distrowatch have blocked a range of ip addresses and I happen to be included?
I cannot think of why they would. I just visit their site to read the latest Linux news once or twice a week.
I've never contacted distrowatch or criticised them so I can�t see I've upset them. In fact I think its a great site.

It's very strange.

Nigel

Are you using a Static IP with Zen or is it Dynamic?

If its Dynamic then maybe the person that had it before did some bad stuff.

But it might just be a routing issue, bit weird though.

*** update **
I also just tested the site via IPv6 (2a00:9080:1:20c::1) and IPv4 (82.103.136.226) both worked fine, so its not an IPv4 or IPv6 issue.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Tue 23-Jul-19 21:11:56)

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Yeah its odd, I thought it was a routing issue, so maybe Zen are having some issues, maybe somebody else using Zen could check.

*** update ***
Also hop 13 looks like its the link between Telia's network and Easyspeedy's network, so might be an issue between them which is also odd due to its fine for me, maybe the OP IP is blacklisted and easyspeedy is blocking them?

Paul

works fine for me https://distrowatch.com/

Working fine here on my Zen connection. Maybe your IP has been blocked / flagged for some reason?

Text

1 23 45 67 89 1011 1213 1415 16

traceroute to distrowatch.com (82.103.136.226), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets  1  192.168.0.11 (192.168.0.11)  0.607 ms  0.354 ms  0.246 ms 2  vt1.cor1.lond2.ptn.zen.net.uk (51.148.72.23)  25.226 ms  25.631 ms  25.471 ms  3  * * * 4  ldn-b9-link.telia.net (62.115.169.134)  25.088 ms  25.356 ms  25.243 ms  5  ldn-bb3-link.telia.net (62.115.117.6)  26.760 ms  25.355 ms    ldn-bb4-link.telia.net (62.115.116.240)  25.222 ms  6  hbg-bb4-link.telia.net (62.115.122.160)  37.370 ms  37.261 ms    hbg-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.249.11)  39.020 ms  7  kbn-bb3-link.telia.net (213.155.130.101)  45.910 ms  46.166 ms    kbn-bb4-link.telia.net (213.155.135.121)  41.184 ms  8  kbn-b3-link.telia.net (62.115.121.13)  62.654 ms    kbn-b3-link.telia.net (62.115.142.209)  51.101 ms     kbn-b3-link.telia.net (62.115.142.207)  44.090 ms 9  easyspeedy-ic-305269-kbn-b3.c.telia.net (62.115.40.174)  44.311 ms  49.651 ms  42.729 ms 10  e82-103-136-226s.easyspeedy.com (82.103.136.226)  41.995 ms  42.365 ms  41.738 ms

I have a static IP address. I thought all Zen customers had static IP addresses?

I need a static IP as I run my own email server and websites.

It looks like I will have to contact Distrowatch and see if I'm blocked for any reason.

I have checked my IP address on the mxtoolbox website for blacklisting and it all shows green.

Its not a major problem, but I would like to know why its happening.

Nigel

Just looked on my Zen account and the line data contains the following:

Your current maximum download speed is 57266Kbps.
Your current line technology is Talk Talk Business.

So I'm on a Talk Talk backbone? Perhaps easyspeedy.com and/or distrowatch don't like Talk Talk?

Joined Zen in October 2015 and the speed and reliability was much better then. Download speed was in the low 70s.
A while back the speed etc started to reduce. That's probably when Zen switched to a Talk Talk backbone around here.

It's all a guess, but it may have something to do with it.

Nigel

The backhaul is entirely unrelated.
I'm sure others above are also on Talktalk backhaul.

Your tracert is passing right through Talktalk's network fine.
The IP is provided by Zen and isn't within the Talktalk I.P pool.

Have you tried reaching the site using Zens DNS servers?

Fine here on Uno, which is TTB backhaul.

I have sent an email to Distrowatch asking if my IP address has been blocked.

Nigel

I received a reply from Jesse Smith at Distrowatch.
My IP address had been blocked due to unusual network activity. The block has now be lifted.

My next job is virus & malware scans on all machines and servers.

Nigel

Your speed drop is more likely to be crosstalk interference as more subscribers took up FTTC in your area.

In reply to a post by NigelLinney:

I received a reply from Jesse Smith at Distrowatch.
My IP address had been blocked due to unusual network activity. The block has now be lifted.

My next job is virus & malware scans on all machines and servers.

Nigel

I thought it might of been that due to you made it all past the link between networks and then failed on the actual server.

I would do like you said and make sure all machines are all up to date, especially the servers, all it takes is one exploit and it all goes down hill.

Paul

Zen trace route

C:\Users\Dan>tracert distrowatch.com

Tracing route to distrowatch.com [82.103.136.226]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 9 ms 1 ms fritz.box [192.168.178.1]
2 16 ms 21 ms 13 ms vt1.cor2.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.72.22]
3 14 ms 15 ms 18 ms ae-8.agg1.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.14]
4 20 ms 13 ms 13 ms ldn-b5-link.telia.net [62.115.169.132]
5 13 ms 13 ms 14 ms ldn-bb4-link.telia.net [213.155.132.196]
6 26 ms 29 ms 26 ms hbg-bb4-link.telia.net [62.115.122.160]
7 30 ms 29 ms 34 ms kbn-bb4-link.telia.net [213.155.135.121]
8 32 ms 32 ms 42 ms kbn-b3-link.telia.net [62.115.142.209]
9 33 ms 33 ms 35 ms easyspeedy-ic-305269-kbn-b3.c.telia.net [62.115.40.174]
10 30 ms 29 ms 31 ms e82-103-136-226s.easyspeedy.com [82.103.136.226]

Trace complete.

Thanks, we discovered that the OP IP was blocked by the host resulting in them being unable to access that site.

Paul