A loopback in a trace route

På Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:12:16 +0100, skrev <erimess>:

> Having trouble with work, again. Yesterday the board wouldn't open
> and I spent a bunch of time on IM with one of the tech guys. (At
> least it was the nice one.)
>

Don't tell'em. They might fire him. Nice techie? *shivers*

.... Things I know very little about delet3ed.

> I'm starving. Where's that cereal I bought yesterday? That's easy to
> 'fix' when I'm in a lazy mood.

Poly ate it.
--
Pibbur
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:07:17 +0100, Pibbur
<oopsREM.OVE512.DeleteThis@tele2capi.talsno> wrote:

>På Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:12:16 +0100, skrev <erimess>:
>
>> Having trouble with work, again. Yesterday the board wouldn't open
>> and I spent a bunch of time on IM with one of the tech guys. (At
>> least it was the nice one.)
>>
>
>Don't tell'em. They might fire him. Nice techie? *shivers*

Yes, he's nice. The other guy is, um... just kind of short and curt
and needs a sense of humor.

>
>... Things I know very little about delet3ed.
>
>> I'm starving. Where's that cereal I bought yesterday? That's easy to
>> 'fix' when I'm in a lazy mood.
>
>Poly ate it.

Two boxes in one day? That's a hungry Poly. (Maybe he was looking
for the prize at the bottom.)

Speaking of hungry, it's many hours later and I'm hungry again and my
dinner is almost ready. So I'm going to go crack a few safes -- or
more like figure out why I'm stuck. <resisting the urge to consult
the walkthru>

--

Erimess Dragon
-==(UDIC)==-

d++e+NT++Om UK!1!2!3!A!L!
U+uCuFuG+++uLB+uA+ nC+nH+nP+nS++nT-xa5

Never compare yourself to the best others can do,
but rather to the best you can do.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:55:22 -0500, erimess wrote:

>Yes, he's nice. The other guy is

The other *head*

>Two boxes in one day? That's a hungry Poly. (Maybe he was looking
>for the prize at the bottom.)

Did you ever open boxes up from the bottom, take out the prize, then seal
up the box again just to watch a sibling not get the prize?

>Speaking of hungry, it's many hours later and I'm hungry again and my
>dinner is almost ready. So I'm going to go crack a few safes -- or
>more like figure out why I'm stuck. <resisting the urge to consult
>the walkthru>

What game is that?
--
The Polychromic Dragon of the -=={UDIC}==-
Webpage http://macecil.googlepages.com/index.htm
RGCUD Dragon Gallery http://home.roadrunner.com/~rgcud/
Chuck Norris: Afraid of NOTHING, except John McCain's 95 year-old mother.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

Words to the wise, Polychromic <macecil.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Speaking of hungry, it's many hours later and I'm hungry again and my
>>dinner is almost ready. So I'm going to go crack a few safes -- or
>>more like figure out why I'm stuck. <resisting the urge to consult
>>the walkthru>
>
>What game is that?

RL Reloaded.
--
Claus Dragon <clauskick.DeleteThis@mpsahotmail.com>
=(UDIC)=
d++ e++ T--
K1!2!3!456!7!S a29
"Coffee is a mocker. So, I am going to mock."

- Me, lately.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:49:13 -0600, Polychromic <macecil DeleteThis @gmail.com>
scribed into the Great Tome of Farnarkling:
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:12:16 -0500, erimess wrote:
>
>>Having trouble with work, again.

<snip>

>>I do sometimes see
>>where there's really big numbers in one spot. This one has big
>>numbers (like 4000 ms) at a place where it says loopback. I'm just
>>curious what that is, and if that's related to the problem or
>>something normal. He said it looked like a problem with a router
>>between here and there, on their side.
>
> A loopback is just when you setup your computer to talk to itself. I
> guess someone could setup a loopback on a remote computer so when you
> pinged it, you would just be pinging yourself.
>
> When you set up a proxy or a webserver on your own computer and you want
> to access it, you use the loopback address of 127.0.0.1 aka "localhost".
>

From ermiess' description it sounds like the "loopback" is actually
referring to a routing loop as can be seen in a tracepath/traceroute
test. If you're seeing packets bouncing around "localhost" (device
loopback) then you've really got something odd happening.

One of these route loops is generally a sign that a network router (or
at least one of it's interfaces) is down, or that it's routing table
(think of it as a map with directions to the next town) has some bad /
missing entries. I'll spare the non-technical people stuff about BGP
and AS advertisements etc.

Usually traffic either stops dead (the little *'s in traceroute output)
or the trace "bounces" between two hosts (usually a sign that the route
table's busted)

>>Not like having this information is going to help me solve anything.
>>I'm just curious.

Nah, it's a network ops problem, nothing you can do as an end user. Be
careful with the curiousity though, look what happened to me

>>They're always having me run those things.

It's standard procedure for first (or even second) tier tech support to
ask you to perform a traceroute/ping test.

>>I know
>>it didn't use to say loopback anywhere in it, but it also looks
>>different since I got DSL. (I just don't remember what looks
>>different.)

A route loop looks like a route loop, just that it fails faster on DSL
or Ethernet

Cheers,
Michael / 'punt.

--
The Internet: Where men are men, women are men,
and children are law enforcement agents.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:36:23 -0600, Polychromic <macecil DeleteThis @gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:55:22 -0500, erimess wrote:
>
>>Yes, he's nice. The other guy is
>
>The other *head*

Well, the fact that one talks a fair amount and the other doesn't say
much might just make them compatible to sit on the same body.

>>Two boxes in one day? That's a hungry Poly. (Maybe he was looking
>>for the prize at the bottom.)
>
>Did you ever open boxes up from the bottom, take out the prize, then seal
>up the box again just to watch a sibling not get the prize?

Considering I was the baby of the family, and usually the one on the
receiving end of these types of things, not for that reason. But I
have opened the box from the bottom to get stuff out.

>
>>Speaking of hungry, it's many hours later and I'm hungry again and my
>>dinner is almost ready. So I'm going to go crack a few safes -- or
>>more like figure out why I'm stuck. <resisting the urge to consult
>>the walkthru>
>
>What game is that?

Safecracker the first. It's not terribly exciting or very long. Or
very difficult. I've yet to find a safe I can't crack. Though I did
finally cheat. I was getting annoyed with going back checking every
room for stuff I missed. But all that did is lead me to the clue -- I
still have to solve it. And that'll give me my last piece to get into
the final safe. Of course, I could've done that anyway cause I have
11 of the 12 numbers -- only 10 tries to get the last one. I'll have
this thing finished tonight.

--

Erimess Dragon
-==(UDIC)==-

d++e+NT++Om UK!1!2!3!A!L!
U+uCuFuG+++uLB+uA+ nC+nH+nP+nS++nT-xa5

Never compare yourself to the best others can do,
but rather to the best you can do.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:49:13 -0600, Polychromic <macecil DeleteThis @gmail.com>
wrote:


>>
>>It seems all it was doing was preventing stuff like Flash from loading
>>right, cause after a small hiccup, I was able to get everywhere else.
>>And was told to wait it out. But I still couldn't open a board late
>>last night and then again today. So they've sent a message off to the
>>provider about it. I asked if anyone else was having this problem and
>>he just said a lot of people never send enough detail for them to have
>>a clue what's going on. (They're always thanking me for my detailed
>>reports.) Now... how can someone not report if their dang room won't
>>open? That sorta prevents you from working at all.
>
>You call it in?

Usually email. Or IM if it's urgent, if they're around.

>
>A couple weeks ago there was a major outage of part of the east coast
>backbone effecting banks and stuff in the NY area. There was a great
>disturbance in the net as if a million WoW players suddenly cried out and
>were silenced!

That's what I can do! I'm very tired, like too tired even to play a
game. I can go watch Alderan get blown to smitherines.

> It was fixed by morning. But it does happen once in a
>while.

Yes. And this has been going on for three days.

--

Erimess Dragon
-==(UDIC)==-

d++e+NT++Om UK!1!2!3!A!L!
U+uCuFuG+++uLB+uA+ nC+nH+nP+nS++nT-xa5

Never compare yourself to the best others can do,
but rather to the best you can do.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:11:39 -0500, erimess wrote:

>Safecracker the first. It's not terribly exciting or very long. Or
>very difficult. I've yet to find a safe I can't crack. Though I did
>finally cheat. I was getting annoyed with going back checking every
>room for stuff I missed. But all that did is lead me to the clue -- I
>still have to solve it. And that'll give me my last piece to get into
>the final safe. Of course, I could've done that anyway cause I have
>11 of the 12 numbers -- only 10 tries to get the last one. I'll have
>this thing finished tonight.

Ah, haven't heard of that one. Being a Thief aficionado, my ears perked
up when you started talking about cracking safes.
--
The Polychromic Dragon of the -=={UDIC}==-
Webpage http://macecil.googlepages.com/index.htm
RGCUD Dragon Gallery http://home.roadrunner.com/~rgcud/
Chuck Norris: Afraid of NOTHING, except John McCain's 95 year-old mother.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:27:20 -0500, erimess wrote:

>On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:49:13 -0600, Polychromic <macecil DeleteThis @gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>>It seems all it was doing was preventing stuff like Flash from loading
>>>right, cause after a small hiccup, I was able to get everywhere else.
>>>And was told to wait it out. But I still couldn't open a board late
>>>last night and then again today. So they've sent a message off to the
>>>provider about it. I asked if anyone else was having this problem and
>>>he just said a lot of people never send enough detail for them to have
>>>a clue what's going on. (They're always thanking me for my detailed
>>>reports.) Now... how can someone not report if their dang room won't
>>>open? That sorta prevents you from working at all.
>>
>>You call it in?
>
>Usually email. Or IM if it's urgent, if they're around.

I was assuming that you call it in, when the internet is broken to a
sufficient degree as to disallow email or IMing.

>>A couple weeks ago there was a major outage of part of the east coast
>>backbone effecting banks and stuff in the NY area. There was a great
>>disturbance in the net as if a million WoW players suddenly cried out and
>>were silenced!
>
>That's what I can do! I'm very tired, like too tired even to play a
>game. I can go watch Alderan get blown to smitherines.
>
>> It was fixed by morning. But it does happen once in a
>>while.
>
>Yes. And this has been going on for three days.

Hmmmm...worrying.
--
The Polychromic Dragon of the -=={UDIC}==-
Webpage http://macecil.googlepages.com/index.htm
RGCUD Dragon Gallery http://home.roadrunner.com/~rgcud/
Chuck Norris: Afraid of NOTHING, except John McCain's 95 year-old mother.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:34:54 +1000, Michael Fleming
<bitbucket DeleteThis @enlartenment.com> wrote:

>
>One of these route loops is generally a sign that a network router (or
>at least one of it's interfaces) is down, or that it's routing table
>(think of it as a map with directions to the next town) has some bad /
>missing entries. I'll spare the non-technical people stuff about BGP
>and AS advertisements etc.
>
>Usually traffic either stops dead (the little *'s in traceroute output)
>or the trace "bounces" between two hosts (usually a sign that the route
>table's busted)

Interesting. So the "loopback" is the problem itself? That's the
line I keep getting the slowdown's on, or sometimes the asterisks. It
always manages to get past it, but it has trouble. The provider
supposedly has been contacted, but I haven't heard anything back.

This information does help, cause it makes me wonder even more... I
had my brother check to see if he could open our whiteboard. If this
doesn't get fixed, I may have to work at his house for 3 days straight
(at a great inconvenience to us both). He has the same ISP, his
traceroute following the same route as mine. (He's in a different
location, and of course starts out at a different place, but they
still converge in the same place and then follow the same route.) He
is getting the same problem at the point of the loopback. But... he
can open the whiteboard!

I'm really curious why he's having no trouble getting that thing to
open and mine stops dead in its tracks. It's like it's not even
trying to load. A popup opens. It's Flash. There's a dotted outline
at first, and if you just hover there it says to click to activate,
like what seems normal. But that's when the board is supposed to
start loading. It doesn't even *try.* It just sits on this blank
screen, says "Done" and does nothing.

>
>>>Not like having this information is going to help me solve anything.
>>>I'm just curious.
>
>Nah, it's a network ops problem, nothing you can do as an end user.

Hmm, yeah, but I'm the one who can't work.

>careful with the curiousity though, look what happened to me

I'm not *that* curious. In fact, I really dislike this kind of
stuff. My "curiosity" is more from the end of just liking to
understand what is going on and what the problem is.

I was told they uploaded a new version of the whiteboard Monday
morning. I work late Sunday night, and then on Monday. I really did
nothing in between. It worked fine Sunday night and then suddenly
Monday I'm having problems. All the other accounting tutors have been
on. I couldn't know about the other subjects cause I don't see them.
I haven't gotten that board open for 3 days.

Something in my gut just thinks there's more to this story.
--

Erimess Dragon
-==(UDIC)==-

d++e+NT++Om UK!1!2!3!A!L!
U+uCuFuG+++uLB+uA+ nC+nH+nP+nS++nT-xa5

Never compare yourself to the best others can do,
but rather to the best you can do.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:27:20 -0500, erimess wrote:

>On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:49:13 -0600, Polychromic <macecil.RemoveThis@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>>It seems all it was doing was preventing stuff like Flash from loading
>>>right, cause after a small hiccup, I was able to get everywhere else.
>>>And was told to wait it out. But I still couldn't open a board late
>>>last night and then again today. So they've sent a message off to the
>>>provider about it. I asked if anyone else was having this problem and
>>>he just said a lot of people never send enough detail for them to have
>>>a clue what's going on. (They're always thanking me for my detailed
>>>reports.) Now... how can someone not report if their dang room won't
>>>open? That sorta prevents you from working at all.
>>
>>You call it in?
>
>Usually email. Or IM if it's urgent, if they're around.
>
>>
>>A couple weeks ago there was a major outage of part of the east coast
>>backbone effecting banks and stuff in the NY area. There was a great
>>disturbance in the net as if a million WoW players suddenly cried out and
>>were silenced!
>
>That's what I can do! I'm very tired, like too tired even to play a
>game. I can go watch Alderan get blown to smitherines.
>

Or watch Basketball get blown to smithereens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7p96aiE32k Part One

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7p96aiE32k Part Two.


--
-=UDIC=-
Optician Dragon
If there's one thing in this life the years have taught, it's - That you can always see it comin', but you can never stop it.
Cowboy Junkies
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:47:00 -0600, Polychromic <macecil.TakeThisOut@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:27:20 -0500, erimess wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:49:13 -0600, Polychromic <macecil.TakeThisOut@gmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>It seems all it was doing was preventing stuff like Flash from loading
>>>>right, cause after a small hiccup, I was able to get everywhere else.
>>>>And was told to wait it out. But I still couldn't open a board late
>>>>last night and then again today. So they've sent a message off to the
>>>>provider about it. I asked if anyone else was having this problem and
>>>>he just said a lot of people never send enough detail for them to have
>>>>a clue what's going on. (They're always thanking me for my detailed
>>>>reports.) Now... how can someone not report if their dang room won't
>>>>open? That sorta prevents you from working at all.
>>>
>>>You call it in?
>>
>>Usually email. Or IM if it's urgent, if they're around.
>
>I was assuming that you call it in, when the internet is broken to a
>sufficient degree as to disallow email or IMing.

Well, I can call my boss. Even she's not in direct contact with them.
But she can call her boss, who is on site. I did have to call her
once when the entire site just went down and she didn't have her IM
on.

>
>>>A couple weeks ago there was a major outage of part of the east coast
>>>backbone effecting banks and stuff in the NY area. There was a great
>>>disturbance in the net as if a million WoW players suddenly cried out and
>>>were silenced!
>>
>>That's what I can do! I'm very tired, like too tired even to play a
>>game. I can go watch Alderan get blown to smitherines.
>>
>>> It was fixed by morning. But it does happen once in a
>>>while.
>>
>>Yes. And this has been going on for three days.
>
>Hmmmm...worrying.

Make it four days. The IT guy finally agreed with me that something
else was going on besides this hiccup in the connection. Since they
uploaded a new version Monday, he thinks there's just something about
it that my browser doesn't like, and he did try to do something -- I
don't know what. Just said to try it again and let him know. I got
it to open once tonight but never again. So hopefully there's a time
we can get together tomorrow so we can work online together. (Was at
my other job yesterday and today.)

Interesting, I noticed about a half hour before we were supposed to be
closed tonight that there were no tutors on. There should have been
two. I IM'ed one of them and he said he'd had some off and on
connection problems. And apparently the evening before they'd had
some problems. And he said the other tutor had disappeared about a
half hour prior to that and we never saw her room on the list again.
So apparently now other people are having trouble.

Which is what happens when they try to fix the board.

--

Erimess Dragon
-==(UDIC)==-

d++e+NT++Om UK!1!2!3!A!L!
U+uCuFuG+++uLB+uA+ nC+nH+nP+nS++nT-xa5

Never compare yourself to the best others can do,
but rather to the best you can do.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route 

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:45:34 -0600, Polychromic <macecil RemoveThis @gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:11:39 -0500, erimess wrote:
>
>>Safecracker the first. It's not terribly exciting or very long. Or
>>very difficult. I've yet to find a safe I can't crack. Though I did
>>finally cheat. I was getting annoyed with going back checking every
>>room for stuff I missed. But all that did is lead me to the clue -- I
>>still have to solve it. And that'll give me my last piece to get into
>>the final safe. Of course, I could've done that anyway cause I have
>>11 of the 12 numbers -- only 10 tries to get the last one. I'll have
>>this thing finished tonight.
>
>Ah, haven't heard of that one. Being a Thief aficionado, my ears perked
>up when you started talking about cracking safes.

It's not worth it, unless you just want a weekend of some not so hard
puzzles. You aren't even a thief in it. You're supposed to be
proving your skills to a prospective employer who makes safes. It's
an odd premise.

And I lied. I didn't finish it last night. Didn't even play. I
stayed online too long.

--

Erimess Dragon
-==(UDIC)==-

d++e+NT++Om UK!1!2!3!A!L!
U+uCuFuG+++uLB+uA+ nC+nH+nP+nS++nT-xa5

Never compare yourself to the best others can do,
but rather to the best you can do.
 >> Stay informed about: A loopback in a trace route