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Archive for 15. July 2009

Internet Meltdown - Fail Whale - Down for just me?

15. July 2009 by admin.

I just picked up my hard copy edition of July CRNtech. Inside I found another article about the Internet Meltdown. You can find CRNtech on http://www.crn.com/. You can search for “Internet Meltdown” from their search box in the upper right of the page. It was just before the back cover of the hard copy version.

I’m not going to quote their article - I’ll let you go visit and read it right on there if you like, but basically with all the Michael Jackson news and events a lot of users got on the Internet to Twitter (the “Fail Whale” supposedly happens on there) and to read and post on web sites and blogs and such. Some large web sites and services had problems remaining operational under that stress of the massive amounts of network traffic. Even Google had an Infrastructure problem that cause it (or them?) to shut down any searches related to Michael Jackson.

The article, which is in a journal mostly for I.T. technical type of people, does bring a good point that I thought was worth mentioning. A lot of users and even companies don’t know what to do when they experience network (Internet) troubles. They may not understand why they can’t get to web sites and services like Twitter at times (especially in situations like huge events causing massive Internet Traffic Surges.)

There are some tools that come with Windows and Mac OS X that can be used to “ping” and “traceroute” (in Windows “tracert”) from your computer to test a web site or web domain name to see if it is reachable. Personally I like better how “traceroute” works in Unix (Linux) or a Mac OS X terminal.

If you ping or tracert a web site name it will tell you…

1.) That DNS is working and resolves the name to the Internet Protocol (I.P.) Address on the Internet.

2.) That your own Internet router and perhaps the one at your Internet Service Provider (I.S.P.) is working. If you get to hops 3 and 4 or better on a trace then chances are your Internet connection is still up.

3.) If part of the Internet is still actually there besides you and your ISP. You will start seeing other ISP or Backbone Provider names in the hop listings or at least the IP Address range should show changing out of the range of your nearby ISP routers to other routers on the Internet.

* Many content providers - like Google and Microsoft - or anyone distributing video and such content to a LOT of users - usually has a distributed system set up to handle load-balancing of the traffic and to provide a “presence” in more geographic areas, and also to cache the traffic (to save it in a place, in a server, much closer to the users) to speed up the access for you.

The Internet is made of a lot of backbone carriers carrying traffic for the long haul and carrying the bulk of the traffic going both near and far. There are communications circuits, Routers big and small that handle the traffic, and Interconect Points where different backbone providers and other large companies peer together to exchange traffic. There are often multiple paths or “routes” that your Internet Traffic can take. The proper routes are usually announced by Routing Protocols automatically - mostly the larger companies and backbone providers (Internet Service Providers included) by using Autonomous System Numbers (ASN’s) to basically say “Everything for the following chunks of IP Address Space comes here…”. Other routers will trust that and that’s what they will do - send it to the big guys, who distribute it down to the smaller guys, who distribute it down to the servers or end users.

Sometimes the announced path goes down. A router or circuit failure occurs. It takes some length of time for the system to figure that out, and then announce the failure. Hopefully there is an alternative path that can then be announce and the traffic again flows normally. Sometimes you will notice that your favorite web site won’t load. You get an error in your program or web browser. A few minutes later (or longer?) it seems to reappear. If it lasts more than 15 minutes then likely something more severe is going on.

A neat web site that I found recently when I had this exact question was:

Is it down for just me? Or for everybody? And interestingly there was a web site just for that question: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/. So you might want to try that the next time you have that question. Am I just down? The web site? or Everbody?

It’s very unlikely that the whole Internet is down. Although I often here that question “Is the Internet down?”. I’m usually pretty nice when I answer that, although it’s tempting to say “NO the Internet’s not down. But maybe you are”.

* Anyway … I do consulting on communications for Sail and Motor Yachts as well as companies and individuals on land. So if you are looking for that kind of help - give me a call or drop me an email.

—
Alan Spicer

DBA Alan Spicer Telcom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
Computer Services, Wired/Wireless Networking,
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* 954-683-3426

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I laughed at this rant on Windows, XP specifically … thought I’d share it

15. July 2009 by admin.

I was looking up something else on Google.com about network computers and such - and came across this rant. It sounded familiar, like I’ve had very similar sessions myself either on my own computers or when fixing them up for my clients. Here goes:

(from: http://www.ncns.com/05dec05.html)

Dear Bill

December 05, 2005

Dear Bill,

Its time we had a little talk. Actually, we’ve been needing to have this talk for about 10 years. But today is as good as any.

First and foremost, WHOSE COMPUTER IS THIS? If it is YOURS, or MICROSOFT’S, then I’d like my $900 back, please! And I have two others that require the same answer.

Second, IF we determine that this computer is mine, I have a few issues. Here are the first few examples that come to mind…

First example:

   1. I tried to use Rhapsody this morning. It wouldn’t start (apparently because I upgraded Windows Media Player). So, I tried to uninstall. It wouldn’t uninstall because it couldn’t find “install.log”. And by the way, there are at least 10 “install.log” files on this computer. Maybe somebody should get creative and name them something like install-applicationname.log? Then, at least I could hunt for it. Doesn’t seem like rocket science to me.
   2. Ok, since I couldn’t uninstall, I tried to “repair”. Couldn’t do that either because some critical DRM file is missing, or changed, or whatever (also caused by Media Player).
   3. I also couldn’t reinstall because I couldn’t uninstall. Pretty damn stupid!
   4. Ok, so lets just DELETE. Nope! I can’t even delete the folder. (Even though the application is useless at this point) something is using some of the files so they can’t be deleted. But what is it using them FOR? Not for making the application work. OBVIOUSLY!

OK, HERE IS MY FIRST POINT… if it is MY COMPUTER, then when I say a file goes in the trash, IT GOES IN THE TRASH. I don’t give a flying flip WHO, OR WHAT is using it.

And now that we have THAT established…

Additional examples:

If I want to run scandisk, I’ll run scandisk. I don’t need you, or Windows, telling me when I need “disk checking”. Same with the informative little “pop-up bubbles”, and a hundred other things! And…

1. XP Professional? What the heck is professional about it? What you really mean is that XP Home is XP “features removed”. So this is really XP Home Plus. Professional would indicate that it is something professionals would use (BY CHOICE) and, therefore, would allow them to make their own decisions about things like scandisk running, network configuration, and 1000 other things. Among other things, WIZARDS SHOULD BE OPTIONAL in a PROFESSIONAL PRODUCT. How about a “Wizards” link on the desktop? That way, if I don’t know how to do it, I can choose a wizard!
2. System Restore? Just an extra place for viruses to hide! But if you disable it, you get stupid error messages like, that you can’t go back to the previous version of Windows Media Player! SURE I CAN! At least, once we establish WHOSE COMPUTER IT IS! DELETE! REINSTALL!

I might mention that I have had every version of Palm smartphone made to date. Please tell me why I have never had ANY of these problems with Palm products? If I want something gone, I DELETE IT. If I want to use something IT JUST WORKS. But with WINDOWS, all I wanted to do this morning was hear ONE LINE from a favorite old John Lennon concert (it was something like, “I’m only just beginning to realize what this record is about…”. BUT NO!!!! As ALWAYS, I have to spend THREE HOURS DOING “STUPID WINDOWS TRICKS” FIRST!

Speaking of which…

Every time I buy my son a new game… uh, lets don’t even go there yet!

To summarize, in the 10 years I have been using Windows, my experience has been that it doesn’t get easier to use. Instead, it gets more and more difficult to TOLERATE all the “automatic pilot” crap. Which is why, at my house, we don’t call it software. We call it CRAPWARE!

And with that in mind, if you can’t fix Windows, WHY NOT JUST LET US ALL RUN LINUX! (Like Palm) I never seem to have any of these problems with Linux either! The only problem with Linux seems to be that it isn’t “mainstream”. And that seems to be more a matter of CRIMINAL INTENT on Microsoft’s part, than A QUALITY OF PRODUCT issue.

Your prompt attention to these issues will be appreciated!

Thanks,

James E. Felton

* Alan Spicer’s note… it doesn’t seem like things have changed much since 2005 - even with Windows Vista. I just went through some problems in Windows Vista Home Premium the other day. All sorts of Windows system problems including that the “Windows Installer” kept crashing and popping up a box that it had died. Kept dieing, probably would have forever continued dieing. Also the Windows main Service Host Processor did some fun antics … and the computer generally acted like it had a virus - including issues with my Anti-Virus software as if it wasn’t started, wouldn’t start, but it was there … and IT said it was working and up-to-date.

Ok, so fortunately for me I decided that since it was working fine a few days before - it must have something to do with the last crap (I mean software) that I installed. I’m not going to name what it was - in fairness - to give them a chance to tell me that I probably shouldn’t have installed it on Vista anyway, or I installed it in the wrong order or something. By the way Skype was in there too as a new install on this machine - and I’ve had problems in the past with Skype becoming a resource PIG. I’m not sure if the Skype “network” turns me into a “Super Node” or how it becomes a pig for me - but it seems damned determined to do so. Did it on XP and it was involved here on Vista as well. (How to turn a reasonably powerful computer into a puddle of Worthlessness!)

Anyway I removed Skype and the other recently installed softwares … and rebooted and all of the problems and symptoms seem to have gone away. So those softwares won’t be coming back on this computer any time soon. Lucky for me I didn’t have to go further and attempt things like “System Restore” to go into “Wayback Machine” mode to a time before the problems. I seem to have nipped it in the bud just with the softwares that I removed. So somehow those softwares were not very friendly with Windows Vista Home Premium and/or other things installed on this computer.