Problems connecting to certain websites

[Danatthepub]

Hi guys,

Im having trouble connecting to BBC sports page. The front page seems ok as does the entertainment section. But the main news page and also the sports page i cannot connect to. Also there are a few random sites which seem to do the same thing.

With my very limited knowledge ive pinged news.bbc.co.uk and seems to come back fine with no packets lost.

Also tried another web browser and another computer and same thing happens. Rebooted the modem and virgin modem and no different.

Can anyone suggest anything?

Thanks

Dan

[a owens]

Yahoo.co.uk been slow/unavailable for me for several days .... all other websites fine ... notice it as it is my homepage ... irritating as preventing access to email account

[Danatthepub]

Strangely bbc is OK now.

Still, i cant get onto an internet forum that i use.

Just hope maybe it sorts it self out soon.

[chickendippers]

Run a tracert to the website in question, type:

tracert *website*

at the prompt (the same place you ran the ping test from).

[Danatthepub]

Run a tracert to the website in question, type:

tracert *website*

at the prompt (the same place you ran the ping test from).

I can run it and it says trace complete, but what does this do?

Thanks

[jcuk]

try accessing the specific sites through a web proxy to make sure its your connection specifically and not the site itself.

I get VM TSC were useless huh?

[Tod]

I could not get my yahoo mail without putting in a proxy in my internet settings - I used webcache.virginmedia.com on port 8080. Only then could I get my yahoo mail.

[JPF]

I too have had issues with Yahoo! mail, I added the proxy Tod detailed and it's OK again. Why is this? Normally, removing a proxy fixes problems like this - is it bad routing? Cheers.

[John Purser]

Jeez - I've tried everything to connect to www.joomlaxtc.com. Swapped out routers, rebooted, macs, pcs, iPhone, tried them all.
So, this could be down to VM?
I'm in Bournville, Birmingham. 20meg service. Any ideas?

Thanks JP

[AppleSauce]

Jeez - I've tried everything to connect to www.joomlaxtc.com. Swapped out routers, rebooted, macs, pcs, iPhone, tried them all.
So, this could be down to VM?
I'm in Bournville, Birmingham. 20meg service. Any ideas?

Thanks JP

Works here, just slow at loading.

[John Purser]

Thanks for checking! When I try to access the site, it 'times out'....

Where are you based?

JP

[tvout]

I find it a real struggle with Yahoo Answers links that come up in searches. If I try in Firefox or Internet Explorer the page often takes forever to load...
Try this one for example:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071220165702AA1j0Ne

Or even just going to:

http://answers.yahoo.com

[Tod]

Seems that the problem is fixed now, can access Yahoo mail with or without the proxy. Can access the above sites also.

[tvout]

I'm still getting "Transferring data from l.yimg.com" in Firefox... :(

[Danatthepub]

im having trouble connecting to www.avforums.com and www.ntsc-uk.com , which are both forums sites. Not sure whether that would have anything to do with it. These sites worked last week and i know that they are not down because i can access them at work.

Im in Stirchley Birmingham.

How would i go about setting up a proxy?

Thanks peeps

[dave6x]

I'm still getting "Transferring data from l.yimg.com" in Firefox... :(
I'm getting the same problems accessing Yahoo mail from VM/NTL broadband.

I also have an Orange PAYG Dial-up connection, that accesses the Yahoo mail servers OK.

[tvout]

im having trouble connecting to www.avforums.com (http://www.avforums.com) and www.ntsc-uk.com (http://www.ntsc-uk.com) , which are both forums sites. Not sure whether that would have anything to do with it. These sites worked last week and i know that they are not down because i can access them at work.

Im in Stirchley Birmingham.

How would i go about setting up a proxy?

Thanks peeps

Strange - I just tried both those sites and they loaded in a couple of seconds for me... I'm in the Dudley/Wolverhampton area on 10MB, not that far...

---------- Post added at 22:25 ---------- Previous post was at 22:22 ----------

I'm getting the same problems accessing Yahoo mail from VM/NTL broadband.

I also have an Orange PAYG Dial-up connection, that accesses the Yahoo mail servers OK.

I can get on the http://mail.yahoo.com page ok (don't have an account though). I often have problems with www.flickr.com (http://www.flickr.com) which I think is linked to Yahoo as you need a Yahoo id to log in...

---------- Post added at 22:27 ---------- Previous post was at 22:25 ----------

I can't log into flickr, again I'm getting the problem transferring data from l.yimg.com...
The main page loaded fine though.
I might see if I can get away with adding l.yimg.com to my hosts file to block it, I think it might be advertising or something...

I'm also using OpenDNS...

[holtender_01]

Hello Danatthepub and John Purser,
Good to see some local people on here... I am in Selly Park.

I too have been having some problems with accessing certain websites recently (since 19/10) especially 'twitter.com'
So it seems to be a VM local issue as I have heard of exactly the same problems with users in Kings Norton and Redditch.

What I had to do to resolve the problem was alter the MTU settings for my connection from the default 1500 to anywhere between 1400 and 1499. I chose 1400 and the previously affected websites now work perfectly.

I suggest you do the same and report back.
I can only imagine that with the recent upgrades that VM are doing everywhere something has changed which has caused the default 1500 setting to become unviable with some sites?

regards,
Thomas

[Danatthepub]

Hello Danatthepub and John Purser,
Good to see some local people on here... I am in Selly Park.

I too have been having some problems with accessing certain websites recently (since 19/10) especially 'twitter.com'
So it seems to be a VM local issue as I have heard of exactly the same problems with users in Kings Norton and Redditch.

What I had to do to resolve the problem was alter the MTU settings for my connection from the default 1500 to anywhere between 1400 and 1499. I chose 1400 and the previously affected websites now work perfectly.

I suggest you do the same and report back.
I can only imagine that with the recent upgrades that VM are doing everywhere something has changed which has caused the default 1500 setting to become unviable with some sites?

regards,
Thomas

Hi Thomas,

Yep thats got it! :nworthy:

Thanks for your help with that. Also tried the proxy way aswell and that seems to work also.

Thanks for your help guys.

[holtender_01]

Danatthepub,
I tried the VM proxy however found that although It did work it hinder the speed so I carried on looked when I found the MTU solution!

Glad to be of help!

Thomas

[ultimate]

I'm still getting "Transferring data from l.yimg.com" in Firefox... :(

Me too!

[Danatthepub]

Ive just tried it and the first yahoo link seems to come up really fast. The second yahoo link seemed to tae about 4-5 seconds but still worked.

Have you tried this MTU solution?

[ultimate]

Changed MTU to 1498, and later 1400, same slowness.

Whatever it is its VM's problem and as such they have to fix it.

[Thomas.Fisk]

Oh, this again? I remember when some routing got lost at newton abbot like this. Do a traceroute to find out where things are misconfigured and then find out who needs to fix it..

[ultimate]

Its morning now and all the yahoo pages are loading up fast like lightning, we'll see how it goes later in the day.

[John Purser]

Changed my MTU settings and can now access those websites I couldn't access in the last couple of days.
Thank God for this forum.

Cheers guys...

[tvout]

Danatthepub,
I tried the VM proxy however found that although It did work it hinder the speed so I carried on looked when I found the MTU solution!

Glad to be of help!

Thomas

I have changed my MTU from 1500 using TCP Optimizer down to 1450 and still having the same problem...

---------- Post added at 19:58 ---------- Previous post was at 19:54 ----------

Done tracerts to the two sites I'm having most trouble with at the moment:
1) answers.yahoo.com
Tracing route to feu.answers.yahoo8.akadns.net [209.73.187.220]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 1 ms <1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1

2 44 ms 9 ms 30 ms 10.21.56.1

3 11 ms 11 ms 8 ms osr01dudl-v11.network.virginmedia.net [62.31.176.129]

4 21 ms 18 ms 13 ms osr01wolv-tenge71.network.virginmedia.net [62.30.254.45]

5 15 ms 16 ms 16 ms man-bb-a-ge-130-0.network.virginmedia.net [195.182.178.65]

6 21 ms 18 ms 20 ms gfd-bb-b-so-200-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.252.192.94]

7 39 ms 32 ms 21 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.78]

8 182 ms 171 ms 171 ms 83.245.9.226

9 595 ms 232 ms 195 ms ae1-p151.msr2.re1.yahoo.com [216.115.108.23]

10 174 ms 179 ms 174 ms gi1-22.bas-a1.re3.yahoo.com [68.142.238.65]

11 174 ms 199 ms 190 ms fe-us.answers.search.vip.re3.yahoo.com [209.73.187.220]



Trace complete.

2) www.flickr.com

Tracing route to www.flickr.vip.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.214.24]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1

2 42 ms 38 ms 11 ms 10.21.56.1

3 156 ms 203 ms 207 ms osr01dudl-v11.network.virginmedia.net [62.31.176.129]

4 30 ms 17 ms 18 ms osr02wolv-tenge71.network.virginmedia.net [62.30.254.65]

5 18 ms 25 ms 18 ms win-bb-b-ge-300-0.network.virginmedia.net [195.182.178.69]

6 17 ms 44 ms 19 ms win-bb-a-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.172.161]

7 19 ms 18 ms 35 ms gfd-bb-b-so-100-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.172.130]

8 27 ms 21 ms 37 ms redb-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.78]

9 170 ms 169 ms 169 ms 213.228.222.182

10 218 ms 218 ms 218 ms so-3-0-0.pat2.dax.yahoo.com [216.115.101.131]

11 220 ms 218 ms 236 ms ae1-p101.msr1.mud.yahoo.com [216.115.104.99]

12 219 ms 219 ms 247 ms v205.bas3.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.209.9]

13 233 ms 218 ms 218 ms www.flickr.vip.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.214.24]



Trace complete.

---------- Post added at 20:19 ---------- Previous post was at 19:58 ----------

Actually it's working for me now. I can access www.flickr.com, www.yahoo.com and answers.yahoo.com (in order of fastest to slowest to load)

---------- Post added at 20:21 ---------- Previous post was at 20:19 ----------

I did change the MTU to 1450 and after many tries I could access the sites, then I changed the MTU back to 1500 rebooted and could access them again after the same number of attempts. I can basically access those sites regardless of the MTU but either way access is really on and off...