Any Network gurus out there?

[elfs]

Calling all network gurus! My ISP and I have been going 'round, trying to figure out what the Hell is going on with my network. My whole day has looked like this:

64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=98 ttl=62 time=37.0 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=99 ttl=62 time=40.4 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=92 ttl=62 time=17835 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=93 ttl=62 time=12791 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=94 ttl=62 time=11101 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=103 ttl=62 time=38.9 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=104 ttl=62 time=42.0 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=105 ttl=62 time=38.2 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=106 ttl=62 time=36.2 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=107 ttl=62 time=35.9 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=85 ttl=62 time=30965 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=86 ttl=62 time=29955 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=87 ttl=62 time=28955 ms
64 bytes from 66.93.87.2: icmp_seq=88 ttl=62 time=27955 ms
108 packets transmitted, 91 received, 15% packet loss, time 358031ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 35.053/19693.559/100801.805/24906.176 ms, pipe 23

The guys at speakeasy, who are usually competent, say they've never seen anything like this; short bursts, followed by long periods where there are packets 30 seconds old coming back. I've even seen a packet 5 minutes old! What heck is going on?

Comments

[wyrdone.livejournal.com]

Either a failute of a switch. Or a cable starting to go bad.

[solarbird]

You'll see pretty much this when you have a confused switch that has been confused by two DHCP servers handing out IP leases in the same address range. The switch is seeing packets from the same IP coming from two different ports and is going, "buhHOY?" and flailing.

Find the duplicate DHCP server, fix it, reboot the switch, and refresh all your DHCP client licenses.

[(Anonymous)]

They're static IP addresses; to the best of my knowledge, there are no DHCP servers running on those switches.

duplicate addresses

[happy-hacker.livejournal.com]

Interesting theory, sounds plausible to me. Either your ISP has assigned (either statically or through DHCP) the static IP you use to someone else, or someone has simply assigned themselves one and gone online, either accidentally or through deliberate malice. Either way, I think you should pull your net offline and have your ISP trace to your IP address and see what, if anything, they get. Without you there they should get a valid trace to anyone else using your ip address. And then they can take appropriate action.

Another possibility might be that you're having home router problems. I assume you've rebooted the thing and checked to make sure the DSL settings are right so YOU aren't using the wrong IP address, or picking something up via DHCP.

That failing, I'd be tempted to think it's a hardware problem too. Given the quality (or lack thereof) of the consumer DSL routers I've had to deal with lately, IMHO it's possible the router is having major problems. This, obviously, is all assuming the address you're pinging is outside your home LAN.

Hope any of this helps.

HH

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

What does traceroute do? Where's it hanging up?

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Packets taking a detour to Mars or something? That's very odd.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Agreed with the first comment -- this smells like a physical layer problem. Unfortunately, the difficult thing about diagnosing layer-1 problems with DSL is that different companies tend to own different parts of the plant, so coordinating troubleshooting can be difficult.

That said, ping isn't giving you enough information here. It's time to break out a sniffer -- a few minutes watching Ethereal (http://www.ethereal.com/) will probably give you a much better idea of what's going on.