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03-14-2007, 12:02 PM | #1 |
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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. __________________ Lois Wakeman http://lois.co.uk http://communicationarts.co.uk http://i4info.blog.co.uk Last edited by LoisWakeman; 03-15-2007 at 01:03 AM. Reason: extra info |
03-14-2007, 12:19 PM | #2 |
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Are you perchance using NTL or Tiscali?
__________________ Kelvyn Web site design, hosting and marketing, Keswick in the UK Lake District If you are planning a visit to Keswick then try Keswick Tourist Information website |
03-14-2007, 04:35 PM | #3 |
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A clue?
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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?
__________________ Lois Wakeman http://lois.co.uk http://communicationarts.co.uk http://i4info.blog.co.uk |
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! __________________ Lois Wakeman http://lois.co.uk http://communicationarts.co.uk http://i4info.blog.co.uk |
03-15-2007, 02:07 AM | #6 | |
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Quote:
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? __________________ Kelvyn Web site design, hosting and marketing, Keswick in the UK Lake District If you are planning a visit to Keswick then try Keswick Tourist Information website |
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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?
__________________ Lois Wakeman http://lois.co.uk http://communicationarts.co.uk http://i4info.blog.co.uk |
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? |
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.) __________________ Lois Wakeman http://lois.co.uk http://communicationarts.co.uk http://i4info.blog.co.uk |
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
__________________ Kelvyn Web site design, hosting and marketing, Keswick in the UK Lake District If you are planning a visit to Keswick then try Keswick Tourist Information website |
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