Are Tiscali Denying routing?

[Muttley]

Hi folks,

The information on this site is astounding! I am in awe. You chaps certainly know your stuff, so after banging my head in a brick wall speaking to tiscali's tech support I thought I would give you guys a whirl!

Anyway sorry to be a complete Noob and post a thread like this first off but I am completely at the end of my tether. This is the weirdest error i have ever seen.

Basically I run my own company, this has been run from home for about the last two and a half years (the R&D period) and since July when we incorporated the company we have expanded very rapidly and we will be moving into premises next week .

We signed up with Tiscali for both residential phone and ADSL provision, there was simply no need for business services (OK so we were being tight!) and this has been generally reliable if somewhat slow, customer service is appaling and they consistantly refuse to give us paper statements.

Anyway the IT provision for the business got serious to wit we are now running 3 XP Pro laptops, 2 XP Pro Desktops and 1 2003 R2 Small business Server (Microsoft action pack subscription is a wonderful thing). We installed the server at the end of july and apart from the fact we didn't have a static IP (causes all sorts of outgoing mail relay issues with messages being bounced as potential spam but there are workarounds) the whole setup has been great.

I use DNS2Go (I can thoroughly reccomend this service) to resolve my Dynamic IP address when I am out of the office and get at my server for all the goodies therein (Sharepoint services, Outlook Web access, remote desktop etc, etc). Not perfect, i know but we knew that we were only months away from a move into premises where we would put our infrastructure and telcomms on a more professional footing - ironically our new premises are owned by a telecomms company who have moved into a new building next door and will be providing everything as part of the rent

This issue reared it's head 36 hrs ago when my wife said she couldn't get e-mail, being the dutiful husband I ignored it putting it down to a keyboard / seat interface issue . I was off to London on business yesterday and did some work on the train on the way down (GNER WiFi on the East Coast main line - superb) and noticed that Outlook Web access (i.e. the exchange server at home) wasn't getting any e-mails in. Checking direct to my host (Betterwebspace - good crew) there were the expected messages sat there in the mailbox. Weird I thought, so got into the server via remote desktop and gave exchange a boot up the @rse and told it to go sic em, which it did and then retured an error saying it couldn't resolve the host name. Anyway as I gould get to the messages via my host's servers i wasn't that bothered.

Sitting down at my desk this morning I fired up the PC and kicked off outlook, there in the inbox was a message from exchange saying it had delayed the sending of a message Bu@@er I though I had SENT via exchange which being on a dynamic IP address is a dodgy business and ends up with about 50% of your messages being bounced back to you as suspected spam. So I applied the sovereign remedy and sent the message out direct via our pop3 mailserver on or webhost. I got this error back,


Task 'Gavin WiredHouse - Receiving' reported error (0x80040900) : 'The server name you entered can not be found on the network (it might be down temporarily). Please verify that you are online and that the server name is correct.'

Right I'll see if the servers are up and then checked my website http://www.wiredhouse.co.uk to see if that was up... ooer it wasn't, right that explains a lot says I Checked with google and the BBC I was getting them OK so its not my kit, checked from the server, a laptop same error. Oh SMEG! A mate then rang to say,

"did you get that e-mail I sent?"
"nay says I, my site is down" I reply
"No it isn't I'm on it now, your internet connection is down you muppet" says he
"No it isn't as I'm on the BBC right now looking at the news"
"You are in the doo doo" says he!

I could get everywhere on the net except to my webhosts own site and my site and of course the mail servers. pinging produced a blank, a coversation with the host then ascertained that the fault lay elsewhere "try your ISP".

So I rang them, well i waited for half an hour then got india confused them but thay say there wasn't a problem

Anyway after a brief panic, I legged it out to the garage and found the old 56k modem. Fired it up on the server, conneced it to BT internet PAYG and got exchange going, receiving messages

Then tried various combinations of pings, tracerts and NSlookup s to come up with this very simple idea.

Tiscali are denying me routing

Here is the command prompt ramblings from my server via the ADSL connection and the dial-up connection, my site is called wiredhouse BTW.

Via Dialup Wiredhouse resolves to the IP address below which I did an NSLOOKUP on and got this;
CDocuments and Settings\Gavin>nslookup 70.86.129.138
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Can't find server name for address 212.74.112.66: Timed out
Server: mk-cache-2.ns.uk.tiscali.com
Address: 212.74.112.67
Name: dumbledore.securesitex.com
Address: 70.86.129.138

then tried a trace route on the ip address

CDocuments and Settings\Gavin>tracert 70.86.129.138
Tracing route to dumbledore.securesitex.com [70.86.129.138]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.3.199
2 72 ms 67 ms 71 ms lo99.mk-1-ips.as9105.net [212.74.111.124]
3 63 ms 58 ms 59 ms ge0-3.mk0.as9105.net [80.40.119.141]
4 96 ms 104 ms 97 ms pos3-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.108.10]
5 75 ms 72 ms 77 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
6 73 ms 74 ms 73 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
7 75 ms 66 ms 67 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
8 39 ms 38 ms 39 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
9 53 ms 50 ms 52 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
10 30 ms 28 ms 34 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
11 56 ms 60 ms 59 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
12 35 ms 34 ms 32 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
13 54 ms 53 ms 62 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
14 70 ms 70 ms 80 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
15 68 ms 72 ms 60 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
16 59 ms 52 ms 45 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
17 34 ms 35 ms 34 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
18 30 ms 29 ms 29 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
19 30 ms 30 ms 29 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
20 31 ms 28 ms 32 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
21 43 ms 44 ms 42 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
22 56 ms 54 ms 50 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
23 42 ms 45 ms 48 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
24 42 ms 39 ms 40 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
25 42 ms 42 ms 40 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
26 30 ms 31 ms 31 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
27 32 ms 30 ms 31 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
28 48 ms 47 ms 41 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
29 29 ms 28 ms 33 ms pos2-p0.lon11.as9105.net [212.74.111.230]
30 32 ms 29 ms 31 ms pos2-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.111.229]
Trace complete.

As it happens 212.74.111.229/230 are tiscali servers

Then a ping on the mail server name

CDocuments and Settings\Gavin>ping mail.wiredhouse.co.uk
Ping request could not find host mail.wiredhouse.co.uk. Please check the name an
d try again.

Then a traceroute on the web address;

CDocuments and Settings\Gavin>tracert www.wiredhouse.co.uk
Unable to resolve target system name www.wiredhouse.co.uk.

Now perform similar methodology to the Dial up connection, first the NS lookup on the domain name;

CDocuments and Settings\SystemAdmin>nslookup www.wiredhouse.co.uk
*** Can't find server name for address 212.74.112.66: Query refused
Server: UnKnown
Address: 212.74.112.66
*** UnKnown can't find www.wiredhouse.co.uk: Query refused

Then nslookup on the ip address;

CDocuments and Settings\SystemAdmin>nslookup 70.86.129.138
*** Can't find server name for address 212.74.112.66: Query refused
Server: UnKnown
Address: 212.74.112.66
*** UnKnown can't find 70.86.129.138: Query refused
Then a ping on the domain name;
CDocuments and Settings\SystemAdmin>ping www.wiredhouse.co.uk
Pinging wiredhouse.co.uk [70.86.129.138] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 70.86.129.138: bytes=32 time=283ms TTL=50
Reply from 70.86.129.138: bytes=32 time=286ms TTL=50
Reply from 70.86.129.138: bytes=32 time=280ms TTL=49
Reply from 70.86.129.138: bytes=32 time=283ms TTL=49
Ping statistics for 70.86.129.138:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 280ms, Maximum = 286ms, Average = 283ms

Then a tracert on the domain name;

CDocuments and Settings\SystemAdmin>tracert www.wiredhouse.co.uk
Tracing route to wiredhouse.co.uk [70.86.129.138]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 171 ms 267 ms 165 ms imsnet-cl10-hg4-bletchley.mdip.bt.net [212.140.2
12.53]
2 183 ms 167 ms 167 ms 192.168.255.61
3 165 ms 167 ms 162 ms 172.16.93.30
4 165 ms 160 ms 162 ms 213.120.62.181
5 167 ms 160 ms 158 ms core2-pos6-0.bletchley.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.31.
37]
6 159 ms 158 ms 162 ms core2-pos13-0.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201.97]
7 163 ms 270 ms 165 ms core2-pos1-0-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.201
.86]
8 203 ms 216 ms 228 ms ge9-1.mpr2.lhr1.uk.above.net [208.185.156.217]
9 234 ms 235 ms 237 ms so-4-0-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net [64.125.27.57]
10 233 ms 232 ms 237 ms so-0-0-0.cr2.dca2.us.above.net [64.125.29.122]
11 264 ms 264 ms 265 ms so-3-0-0.cr2.dfw2.us.above.net [64.125.29.169]
12 310 ms 316 ms 307 ms 216.200.6.237.theplanet.com [216.200.6.237]
13 266 ms 281 ms 263 ms te9-1.dsr02.dllstx3.theplanet.com [70.87.253.22]
14 262 ms 270 ms 262 ms po32.dsr02.dllstx5.theplanet.com [70.85.127.110]
15 266 ms 263 ms 267 ms po1.car04.dllstx5.theplanet.com [70.84.160.134]
16 304 ms 305 ms 302 ms dumbledore.securesitex.com [70.86.129.138]
Trace complete.

That says to me that Tiscali are denying my routing! What do you think.

As an aside I have also discovered that I can't get to a forum I frequent via ADSL but I can via Dial up and the forum is totally unrelated!


Advice would be welcome, Pipex are looking very good right now for the home package. What should I do, how should I threaten and do Tiscali take any notice of Trading Standards anyway?

many thanks in advance

Muttley (gavin)

[silver]

looks like there's a problem there somewhere,. I spect the techy ppl will sort it out at some point,. tech support won't help you as they are phone jockys with a set script (esp @ tiscali)

I would either wait for them to fix it,. swap ISPs or see if the hosting company can move the server to another IP,. note that you should check the new IP does work from your connection before letting them move it

Sil

PS, welcome to TS!

[Memfis]

Welcome,

also looks like one of tiscali's dns servers is not responding / incorrectly set.

I've heard the only way to get rid of tiscali is to break their AUP.

[Muttley]

I've heard the only way to get rid of tiscali is to break their AUP.

Originally Posted by Memfis

AUP being? That (when I found out what that is) is not the only thing I would like to break at Tiscali This is now 48 hours into this issue and it is effectively costing me a lot of money as it is diverting my time away from profitable activities to deal with this.

AHH enlightenment! Accepted Use Policy

I would either wait for them to fix it,. swap ISPs or see if the hosting company can move the server to another IP,. note that you should check the new IP does work from your connection before letting them move it

Originally Posted by Silver

Been there allready! I can't even get to my hosts site, they're a fairly small company so don't have an armada of servers and IP addresses at their beck and call so they can't shift my site out of the blocked range, but as with any small company the service is SUPERB! (*Warning Shameless Plug* for the record they are called BetterWebSpace and their URL is http://www.betterwebspace.com/ *End of Shameless Plug)

Looks like I can't get to anything in the 70.85.*.* address range whilst on ADSL so there is a BIG hole in my intarnets right there NOT GOOD.

Thanks for the help folks it is appreciated. I will start to do battle on the phone in about 10 mins.

Muttley

[Muttley]

"Due to severe weather conditions in the Highlands area of Scotland some of our staff...."

And this affects India how?

[silver]

have you tried disconnecting and re-connecting your adsl connection?

also - can PM one of the tiscali reps, try http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/member.php?u=4628

or join tiscali's forum and try there..

ano idea would be to try emailing

technical@
abuse@

on the following domains,.

tiscali.co.uk
uk.tiscali.com
as9105.com

I don't know whether they monitor those but they might, just keep the email short and explain the routing issue may or may not help

Sil

[Muttley]

Right they have admitted thay have a problem with routing in a certain address range and that they have a dedicated team working on it right now! They have received lots of complaints about this (No sh:t sherlock!) and they should have it fixed in the next couple of days.


I am so underwhemed.....

...... now where did I put pipex's number....

So why when I made the same complaint yesterday morning was I fobbed off with it's your hosts fault, it's your equipment, it's the wrong type of leaves on the line, everything bar it possibly, just possibly could be our fault

Hmm.... let's see, that's £650 per day plus VAT per man, that's two days lost business so far for two men... this is going to be a NICE invoice they are going to get. Pity I can't charge for consequential loss due to sheer bloody incompetence as you can in the States.

I wouldn't mind if they had come straight out with it and said "we have a problem" then you can deal with it, find a work around even dare I say it sympathise.

[Muttley]

Sorted!

Looks like that had to re-boot a server as I lost ADSL completely for 10 mins, when it came back up all is better.

Funny that 15 mins after I pointed them right at the issue. Anyway it is fixed.
and this forum has now gone into my favorites.

To the staff at Tiscali - I don't have a problem with the majority of you, you just happen to be working for an organisation that has based its business model on the best practises of British Leyland!

To the shareholders of Tiscali - sell

To the management of Tiscali - Think about it, you are a communications company that can't communicate, empower your staff, let them make decisions, use tiered support. Yes filter the muppet calls out at front line call centers ("My internets arn't working, it all stopped when the power went off") but if they can't sort the problem out let them speak to secondary and tertiary support engineers direct especially when you have a technically savvy customer on the phone. The best diagnostic tool you have are your customers! STOP relying on call management and scripts, AND BE HONEST, people are a lot more forgiving if you are up front.

Thank you and goodnight

This forum is now firmly in my favorites

thanks for the assistance chaps

[Memfis]

Glad it's sorted.

Always good to see a fellow new business startup here.
I've also booked marked your site however unfortunately wont be using your services for a while (until I move or demolish this house). Besides spent last weekend installing cat5e through innards of the house. Wont be repeating that again for a while