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A rant and a plea for assistance.
Oct. 1st, 2002 11:29 amI'm beginning to suspect the TUNET sysadmins weren't taking me seriously until yesterday. I suppose I can't blame them; Tsuru Bunka Daigaku is a liberal arts college, so they probably aren't used to students coming in who actually know anything about computers. That combined with my poor Japanese seemed to have them suspecting that the problem was just a dead server on AOL's part. But I finally got them to investigate further, and they called another college in the area and confirmed that yes, Netscape.com, etc. is up and running, why do you ask? So it's officially a problem on their end now, at least. They even let me hang around for an hour or so while they poked at servers and watched traces bounce around. No luck, so I got a "come back tomorrow" again, but at least I know they're doing something this time instead of dismissing me as a computer-illiterate gaijin.
In the meantime, I've confirmed that whatever the problem is has blocked out all of AOL Time/Warner and its many, many subsidiaries (and their subsidiaries, and their subsidiaries... curse you, conglomeration!) The only ones I really care about are AOL and ICQ; between the two of them I lose pretty much all contact with most of my family, as well as all my chat capabilities save through IRC. Through watching my email traffic, I've discovered that I can receive mail from AOL users, but any attempts to send to them bounce back... I wouldn't be surprised if that extends to transmissions in general. Some sites have dropped completely off the map (AOL.com, ICQ.com, aoltimewarner.com) while others toss back a "TTL expired in transit" message when pinged (Netscape.com and a couple other minor ones). A tracet command to the latter category eventually arrives, but it takes so long that a web browser times out trying to make contact. (And regardless, all the servers I actually care about are in the former category.)
I have not ruled out AOL Time/Warner as being partially at fault; despite the fact that the problem seems exclusive to TUNET, it also seems exclusive to AT/W sites, which is far too coincidental. I'm wondering if the servers in question implemented some new software last Monday that looks a tad too suspicious for TUNET's firewall or something. So anyone who's reading this, I'd like you to email them and ask. (All of you, if you can; a flood of email is more likely to get noticed than just one.) Ask if they added a new protocol/software/whatever sometime between Sunday 8pm and Monday 5pm, Pacific Time, last week; that's when the glitch started. If they did, direct them to Tsuru U's website and ask them to explain the situation to the local techs (keeping in mind that Tsuru might not be able to respond via email). There are students here cut off from home; don't leave us stranded!
In the meantime, today they got a single computer in the lab to punch through, largely by disabling multiple firewall safeties for it. Naturally, they don't want to have to do this for the entire system, so right now they're letting me use this to access my account, get my AIM fix (through AOL Quick Buddy), etc. Rather inconvenient, especially since ICQ is still out of the question, but it'll do for now. They hope to have a more permanent solution up an running by the end of the week. Everyone keep your fingers crossed.
In the meantime, I've confirmed that whatever the problem is has blocked out all of AOL Time/Warner and its many, many subsidiaries (and their subsidiaries, and their subsidiaries... curse you, conglomeration!) The only ones I really care about are AOL and ICQ; between the two of them I lose pretty much all contact with most of my family, as well as all my chat capabilities save through IRC. Through watching my email traffic, I've discovered that I can receive mail from AOL users, but any attempts to send to them bounce back... I wouldn't be surprised if that extends to transmissions in general. Some sites have dropped completely off the map (AOL.com, ICQ.com, aoltimewarner.com) while others toss back a "TTL expired in transit" message when pinged (Netscape.com and a couple other minor ones). A tracet command to the latter category eventually arrives, but it takes so long that a web browser times out trying to make contact. (And regardless, all the servers I actually care about are in the former category.)
I have not ruled out AOL Time/Warner as being partially at fault; despite the fact that the problem seems exclusive to TUNET, it also seems exclusive to AT/W sites, which is far too coincidental. I'm wondering if the servers in question implemented some new software last Monday that looks a tad too suspicious for TUNET's firewall or something. So anyone who's reading this, I'd like you to email them and ask. (All of you, if you can; a flood of email is more likely to get noticed than just one.) Ask if they added a new protocol/software/whatever sometime between Sunday 8pm and Monday 5pm, Pacific Time, last week; that's when the glitch started. If they did, direct them to Tsuru U's website and ask them to explain the situation to the local techs (keeping in mind that Tsuru might not be able to respond via email). There are students here cut off from home; don't leave us stranded!
In the meantime, today they got a single computer in the lab to punch through, largely by disabling multiple firewall safeties for it. Naturally, they don't want to have to do this for the entire system, so right now they're letting me use this to access my account, get my AIM fix (through AOL Quick Buddy), etc. Rather inconvenient, especially since ICQ is still out of the question, but it'll do for now. They hope to have a more permanent solution up an running by the end of the week. Everyone keep your fingers crossed.
