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Old 03-14-2007, 12:02 PM   #1
LoisWakeman
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Default Weird hardware/router problem?

Pate has recently got a new laptop which runs Vista, and he has a really odd problem in picking up email and accessing certain servers on my web host's network (for 2 days now). Superficially, it looks like a routing glitch, as a tracert times out after 18 hops to the affected sites.

So I fired up my (XP) laptop and can see the sites fine; the tracert is different after the first few hops and doesn't time out.

As we are both on the same LAN and the router does NAT: how can the outside world tell that it needs to follow a different route for the two machines? The tracerts are reproducible over time, so it isn't just transient changes.

[Edit]: the other difference is that one machine (XP) is in a domain and the other (Vista) isn't, but they both use the same router.

I'm going to have some wine now before I pull all my hair out! See you tomorrow.

Last edited by LoisWakeman; 03-15-2007 at 01:03 AM. Reason: extra info
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Old 03-14-2007, 12:19 PM   #2
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Are you perchance using NTL or Tiscali?

   
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Old 03-14-2007, 04:35 PM   #3
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Default A clue?

Quote:
Originally Posted by LoisWakeman View Post
...
... I fired up my (XP) laptop and can see the sites fine; the tracert is different after the first few hops and doesn't time out.
Have you tried doing a tracert for other places than your hosting site? That might provide a clue.
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:50 AM   #4
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No, BT Business broadband. I'm intrigued by why Tiscali or NTL would cause such a problem though?
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:52 AM   #5
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Yes: the sites that do load on the suspect laptop follow more or less the same route as the OK one. The sites that fail use a very different path after about 5 hops; on the OK laptop and another machine I just tried this morning, all sites use the same path.

It all seems totally illogical!
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Old 03-15-2007, 02:07 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LoisWakeman View Post
I'm intrigued by why Tiscali or NTL would cause such a problem though?
NTL have been having routing issues recently causing web servers using Lynx/NTL connectivity to become unavailable. Supposedly this is being/has been fixed?? Reported also to have been a problem for Tiscali users.

There have been reported network issues reported in the way that Vista interacts with routers, such as described here. Others have reported a bug in IPv6 handling in Vista causing nameserver resolution problems. Can the Vista machine access the servers using just the IP address?

   
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Old 03-15-2007, 06:45 AM   #7
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Thanks Kelvyn: that looks like it might be a clue! We already tried to turn off IP6 but couldn't: I'll try IP addresses and also look at SPI on the router and see what's happening. As the article you cited says - how the hell did they miss that in beta testing?
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Old 03-15-2007, 01:59 PM   #8
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Lois-
"The sites that fail use a very different path after about 5 hops; "
Guessing here:
Perhaps the Vista machine, using IE7 instead of IE6, is also using IP6 and when the packets hit one certain machine--the one where your tracerts change--that machine is having the problems handling IP6?

Does the Vista machine have routing problems all the time, or only when using one particular browser (IE7?) etc?
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Old 03-16-2007, 12:39 AM   #9
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I think you are probably right, groucho: it affects FireFox and both Windows Mail and Thunderbird, as well as IE7. And there is also the SPI issue in the link that Kelvyn sent: but we have no intention of turning off the router firewall for this machine.

What I don't understand is why the routing is different for some sites but not others in the same IP block.

Oh well, I guess lots of others will be having similar problems and a fix will be issued: but that isn't the point really. MS must have known that our setup is very common, and should have tested (or even better, not included/made optional) IP6 support.

I can't test IP access to the affected sites as it is denied (they probably use host headers to host mutliple sites per IP I guess.)
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Old 03-16-2007, 01:23 AM   #10
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Lois, you can disable IPv6 in Vista to see if that resolves the issue. Not for the fainthearted, though. See this Technet article

   
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