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Internet Issues in the US - Possible Backbone Issue

88 points by JohnTHaller ↗ HN
There seems to be an issue with Level 3 at the moment which is causing all sorts of sites to be unreachable for some people but not others. Rackspace (mail, hosting, cloud, etc), Facebook, Hotmail, Github, Digital Ocean, etc.

For those experiencing connectivity issues, try a different ISP/network. For example, I can't connect to any of the above networks via my regular Time Warner cable connection or via my T-Mobile hotspot. But I can connect via my Verizon hotspot.

48 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 97.9 ms ] thread
zebra
Maybe NSA filter overload?
motoboi
NSA updating firmwares.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
elliottcarlson
While most of these services have now been rerouted via Above Net etc, some ISPs such as Time Warner (in NY at least) still seem to be routing via Level3 and unable to get to a lot of destinations.
JohnTHaller
Time Warner always seems slow to re-route. T-Mobile is having the same issue.
nayefc
Because Time Warner sucks.
ajpiano
Confirm. Woke up this morning to limited connectivity, realised I was getting to some sites and not others. While on hold with TWC (where they said there was an 'outage affecting service in your area'), loaded HN to see if, well, HN would load, and this was the #3 story. Thanks HN, GFY TWC!
schandur
You just described my morning. Opened HN right after this:

  Tracing route to debian.org [128.31.0.51]
  over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2    42 ms    28 ms    28 ms  cpe-74-73-128-1.nyc.res.rr.com [74.73.128.1]
  3    14 ms    13 ms    12 ms  gig-0-2-0-3-nycmnya-rtr1.nyc.rr.com [24.29.98.1]
  4    12 ms    15 ms    15 ms  184.152.112.105
  5    17 ms    15 ms    15 ms  ae-3-0.cr0.nyc20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.76]
  6    13 ms    12 ms    15 ms  107.14.17.169
  7    15 ms    12 ms    13 ms  xe-4-2-0.edge4.frankfurt1.level3.net [4.68.63.121]
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
nayefc
Time Warner asked me to give them the milliseconds of a working website traceroute, instead of the broken link to a non-working website! It's hilarious (and quite sad) how incompetent Time Warner is.
apaprocki
I guess it's a question for NANOG and not HN (if there are any TWC netops here, chime in!), but I'd love to hear a PM why the very expensive routers they buy are not able to automatically re-route to a different peer AS when this happens.
JohnTHaller
According to Internet Pulse, the Level 3 issues seem to be solved as of 11:03am. Still showing a slow connection between AT&T to Cogent and AT&T to SBC. http://www.internetpulse.net/

I am still unable to reach any of the above sites/networks via my Time Warner Cable connection, though.

apaprocki
Too funny -- I diagnosed this to L3 on my home net this morning and I found myself saying "I wonder if anyone else has this issue?". When it comes to the backbone providers there is no Twitter account or status.level3.net or status.theinternet. Hard to do when everything is decentralized. I usually go hit NANOG when stuff like this happens but you're not guaranteed to find something real time there.
aroch
Well, there is lg.level3.net but it's down too!
chimeracoder
> Hard to do when everything is decentralized.

It's funny, because when you think about it, the Internet is remarkably centralized despite its potential to be almost completely decentralized.

A coworker of mine was telling me just this week that the building we work in, in New York City, is one of two single points of failure for the Northeast (and both points of failure are in New York).

This is an incredibly chilling thought when you consider just how little control humans still have over natural disasters (we saw this firsthand last year in NYC).

By "single point of failure" I don't mean that every single person would be unable to access every single website, but that large chunks of the Internet (particularly anything coming from Europe) would be unavailable for most of those users.

mrgriscom
wouldn't that traffic eventually get routed via asia?
malandrew
Out of curiosity, what do you do to diagnose something like this? What tools and commands?
baldfat
trace route is nice BUT mtr is better. Mtr does averages on latency at every node and any lost packets.
tux
I thought this is only associated with my routers "DNS Amplified DDoS vulnerability" on Asus RT-N56U router when using Level3 DNS "209.244.0.3 and 209.244.0.4" but after upgrading my firmware the issue continued. So I've changed my DNS to "8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4" google dns and everything started working normal for me. Good to know that this is not just me ^_^
pinkmist
These issues have been around for at least a couple of weeks now. I too have been monitoring Internet Pulse and what I see is not only Level 3 puking on a regular basis but several of the other backbones also. Quite honestly, it's either a gross lack of competence or the feds are beginning to condition the net as they are in the military. ~Ginn
joezydeco
We lost telecom for almost all of Thursday and our provider told us there was a major metro fiber cut somewhere. Related?
gesman
My dedicated server went on to serving data as dialup modem speed and provider said it was optic fiber issues on their end. That seemed to be fixed later on.
dec0dedab0de
I have to remember to check HN before driving in to work when a bunch of people call me about outages.
TimHordern
We're beginning to see sites come back up on our TWC connection.
JohnTHaller
As of 1pm EDT, I can now reach Rackspace, Facebook, Hotmail, Github, Digital Ocean, etc.
raiyu
We can confirm that there are large issues on Level3's network we've had to pull them from the routing mix until they get everything resolved and stabilized.

Thanks, Moisey cofounder DigitalOcean

patrickg_zill
Level3 is in the midst of grooming/updating/changing some of their fiber connections.

One Level3 DC I have servers in, was served out of Baltimore, MD ; but in the last few weeks they changed it to be served out of NYC. By "served" I mean that the actual huge-Cisco that the fiber terminated to, was in Baltimore.

Very glad to have moved out of Level3, actually :)