100% packet loss on the way to server - revisited

I've been pulling my hair out for the last two days trying to figure out why I can't login and, on the odd occasion that I miraculously do manage to do so, my ping is through the roof. As in so high that vendor's take 2 or 3 minutes to load. It doesn't matter which gateway I use, the result is the same on all 3.

I eliminated traffic on my end as a cause. Then I eliminated my ISP. I suspect that it isn't my line however don't have proof (beyond the screenshots to come). Eventually after far longer than it should have taken, I thought of doing a route trace and discovered something interesting. My packets always seem to get dropped in the same place and it isn't even on my continent. Hence me suspecting that it isn't my line.

Below are three plots from PingPlotter. It should be noted that results are intermittent. Sometimes I manage to make it through to the server using the American gateway, sometimes the Australian. But when the packets are lost it is always in the same place. And I can never get past the City of Sarn before the connection craps out again.

I would deeply appreciate any insight into this intermittent (it's happened a number of times before and lasted ~1 week until it cleared up by itself) and horrifically frustrating problem. Especially insight into how to get around it. I'm hoping it is a known issue with a simple solution which doesn't rely on phoning a data/switching/routing centre on another continent and telling them to get their shit together and stop being dicks. :P

We'll need someone else to look at this, I am shitty with PingPlotter.

If you want to try WinMTR, I can have a look at that?

With my crap level of PP-fu, I can't see a lot of PL - only that non-consistent shaping on hop 11 in your first screenshot.

In this context, I don't know what the "Host Unreachable" thing means because there is no other real indications of errors. Its a little like your IP has been blocked or something, but I strongly doubt that is the case.

What I would recommend is grabbing WinMTR and running the trace to a recent instance IP (from clients.txt in your POE/Logs folder) instead of the gateway - we can look for issues and anomalies in there.

You're not running peerblock or anything? All your POE executables have been set to "allowed" in your firewalls?

Thanks for the interest in helping. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, this problem cleared up by itself again so any troubleshooting efforts now would be useless. This time after only 3 days instead of a whole week. When it happens again (as it inevitably does) I'll do as you suggest.

*sigh* It's happening again. This has me pulling my hair out in frustration. Which is bad because I'm damn proud of my hair. :P I'm starting to suspect that it is my ISP despite my earlier troubleshooting.

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.1.1 - 0 | 50 | 50 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| xx-xxx-xx-x.xxx.xxxx.co.za - 0 | 50 | 50 | 11 | 15 | 147 | 11 |
| xxx-xx-xx-xxx.xxx.xxxx.co.za - 0 | 50 | 50 | 21 | 25 | 119 | 23 |
| xx-xx-xxx-xxxxxx-x.xxxx.co.za - 0 | 50 | 50 | 28 | 46 | 101 | 29 |
| 197.84.5.241 - 0 | 50 | 50 | 173 | 187 | 216 | 203 |
| w1-po0-3-5-0.thd-p-2.optinet.net - 0 | 50 | 50 | 173 | 183 | 210 | 176 |
| be-3-779-thd-up-1.optinet.net - 0 | 50 | 50 | 173 | 183 | 210 | 201 |
| be-15-779-thd-linx-1.optinet.net - 0 | 50 | 50 | 167 | 176 | 238 | 187 |
| bbr02.lon01.networklayer.com - 0 | 50 | 50 | 166 | 183 | 232 | 166 |
| ae7.bbr02.tg01.lon01.networklayer.com - 0 | 50 | 50 | 166 | 175 | 245 | 180 |
| ae0.bbr02.eq01.ams02.networklayer.com - 0 | 50 | 50 | 178 | 193 | 245 | 183 |
| ae6.dar02.sr01.ams01.networklayer.com - 0 | 50 | 50 | 178 | 181 | 210 | 181 |
| po2.fcr01.sr01.ams01.networklayer.com - 60 | 50 | 20 | 178 | 185 | 232 | 179 |
| No response from host - 100 | 50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR - 0.8. Copyleft @2000-2002 Vasile Laurentiu Stanimir ( stanimir@cr.nivis.com )

I can't even get the instance IP because I can't get past the char loading screen. It just hangs and hangs and hangs while contacting the server.

It's not an issue with firewalls or blocking software on my end because it is intermittent. Comes and goes with no changes made on my end. Disabling the various software makes no difference either.

The plot thickens. I play a mud called WoTmud and have the exact same problem logging in to play it too. I can enter my login details (so surface contact is made at least) but then hang while trying to make contact. Thinking that some more info from a different perspective might help, I ran WinMTR on the IP of the mud's server (72.52.169.8). Below are the results.

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.1.1 - 0 | 76 | 76 | 1 | 2 | 21 | 1 |
| xx-xxx-xx-x.xxx.xxxx.co.za - 0 | 76 | 76 | 10 | 13 | 38 | 13 |
| xxx-xx-xx-xxx.xxx.xxxx.co.za - 0 | 76 | 76 | 28 | 31 | 61 | 39 |
| xx-xx-xxx-xxxxxx-x.xxxx.co.za - 0 | 76 | 76 | 35 | 39 | 78 | 37 |
| xxxxxx-x-x-x-x-xx-xxx-x-x.xxxx.co.za - 0 | 76 | 76 | 180 | 192 | 216 | 215 |
| w1-po0-3-5-0.thd-p-2.optinet.net - 0 | 76 | 76 | 180 | 203 | 1181 | 1181 |
| be-2-778-thd-up-2.optinet.net - 2 | 76 | 75 | 174 | 185 | 239 | 177 |
| xe-10-1-3.edge4.London1.Level3.net - 2 | 76 | 75 | 178 | 189 | 246 | 196 |
| 4.69.134.46 - 98 | 76 | 2 | 13007 | 14809 | 16612 | 13007 |
| LIQUIDWEB.edge4.Chicago2.Level3.net - 0 | 75 | 75 | 262 | 276 | 390 | 283 |
| lw-dc3-core1-vlan52.rtr.liquidweb.com - 0 | 75 | 75 | 269 | 285 | 496 | 374 |
| lw-dc3-dist16-po5.rtr.liquidweb.com - 0 | 75 | 75 | 277 | 282 | 307 | 278 |
| No response from host - 100 | 75 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR - 0.8. Copyleft @2000-2002 Vasile Laurentiu Stanimir ( stanimir@cr.nivis.com )