maren

Whenever I log onto UHH, it seems I have to wait forever when I click on another site within UHH. Most of the time I get a message saying "Can't get to that page." I have a new laptop with the latest processor. Is the UHH site that busy? Anyone else have this problem?

dirtpusher Loc: tulsa oklahoma

Maybe your provider is slow

maren

Maybe so, but all new lines have been laid and the prices have sure reflected the supposed improvement. I will check that out. Thanks

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Do you have problems with slow with other sites? Are you on wifi or hard wired?

rjaywallace Loc: Wisconsin

Never, ever had the problem you describe. And, like many UHH members my access is not the latest and greatest.

DavidPine Loc: Fredericksburg, TX

UHH is one of the faster sites. Must be you.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Usually UUH is pretty fast, pages are quite small and doesn't take long to load.

There are a couple of terminal tools that can be used to help identify the problem, although you will be able to do little about it. In terminal type

ping uglyhedgehog.com

results here in

PING uglyhedgehog.com (216.157.94.30): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=300.702 ms
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=296.641 ms
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=296.128 ms
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=293.118 ms
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=967.978 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=1485.532 ms
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=6 ttl=55 time=1280.395 ms
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=7 ttl=55 time=396.383 ms
64 bytes from 216.157.94.30: icmp_seq=8 ttl=55 time=310.459 ms

what your doing is sending a packet to the uglyhedgehog server and it sends the packet back the time to make the trip is the ping time in milli seconds. It's a bit like sonar.

What it tells us first thing is the DNS resolution is working Dns is the look up of names and corresponding IP addresses Uglyhedgehog.com is meaningless to the computer it needs a network address and a dns server provides the address by default your isp supplies 2 (one is a backup if the other doesn't respond) sometimes they get busy. You don't have to use your isp's DNS Servers many people use Googles public dns servers at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 If you are at all unsure of a guy who says he can fix your computer ask him what 8 dot 8 dot 8 dot 8 is and he should tell you its googles dns server. Every network engineer uses it. If he doesn't know, steer clear, you don't want him working on your systems.

If the name wasn't resolved it could be a dns problem so next step is

ping 8.8.8.8 if you don't get a reply you are not connected to the internet.
If you do but you cant ping say google.com then you have a dns problem. If google.com works and uglyhedgehog.com doesn't, uglyhedgehog.com may have a problem.

The replies are pretty normal 300 ms is 0.3 seconds which is typical around packet 5 there was a glitch and it took around 1.5 seconds to reply that is slow but it probably was a collision ( 2 computer systems try to use the wire at the same time and the packets crash into each other when this happens they both back off a random amount of time and then retry) over all 300 ms isn't too bad, some folk with good connections might get as low as 10ms. I just tried pinging a local machine on my lan and got 0.4 of a millisecond (4 10,000ths of a second thats fast).

Ok so if your ping times are slow or packets are being lost another command we can use is traceroute (or tracert on windows) this is a bit like a beefed up ping command your packet is passed from one computer to another via a number of different networks. traceroute essentially measures the time for each segment to be traversed.

traceroute uglyhedgehog.com
traceroute to uglyhedgehog.com (216.157.94.30), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.3.1 (192.168.3.1) 1.418 ms 1.019 ms 1.042 ms
2 * * *
3 172.16.0.49 (172.16.0.49) 88.049 ms 110.338 ms 160.151 ms
4 172.30.199.49 (172.30.199.49) 159.612 ms 103.759 ms 160.008 ms
5 te3-3.ea101.cwt.btireland.net (193.120.76.121) 160.413 ms 158.436 ms 370.235 ms
6 bundle-ether127-10.rt101.cwt.btireland.net (193.95.138.1) 149.791 ms
dln-b1-link.telia.net (62.115.146.14) 160.537 ms 157.120 ms
7 bundle-ether29.core102.cwt.btireland.net (193.95.129.104) 161.325 ms
ldn-bb3-link.telia.net (62.115.136.68) 168.837 ms 169.020 ms
8 bundle-ether13.br001.cwt.btireland.net (193.95.129.121) 150.403 ms
nyk-bb3-link.telia.net (62.115.124.120) 238.466 ms
bundle-ether13.br001.cwt.btireland.net (193.95.129.121) 159.351 ms
9 166-49-168-128.eu.bt.net (166.49.168.128) 158.480 ms
dls-b21-link.telia.net (213.155.130.67) 298.816 ms
166-49-168-128.eu.bt.net (166.49.168.128) 147.422 ms
10 peer1-ic-307696-dls-bb1.c.telia.net (213.155.129.102) 289.069 ms
t2c1-ge9-0-0.uk-glo.eu.bt.net (166.49.208.244) 159.642 ms
peer1-ic-307696-dls-bb1.c.telia.net (213.155.129.102) 268.663 ms
11 10ge-xe-2-3-0.sat-8500v-sbcor-1.peer1.net (216.187.124.39) 289.007 ms
10ge.xe-0-0-0.linxb.ldn-teleh-dis-1.peer1.net (195.66.224.156) 150.392 ms *
12 www.uglyhedgehog.com (216.157.94.30) 1822.504 ms 710.174 ms 1719.375 ms

Ok the first hop was to my router 192.168.3.1, we don't know about hop 2 but its my ISP hop 3 and 4 the 172.x.x.x. addresses are in my isp's lan
I'm guessing the first 172 is a regional lan and the second a national lan ( still on private addresses)
hop 5 finally on to the public internet

The real interesting bits of the route tend to be where there are *s e.g hop 11 where there seems to be high traffic.
If there was a lot of ***** somewhere in the middle then an important hop is not working well. What should happen is the route will be changed and another path found. It was designed to handle nuclear attack so individual networks can go down and packets rerouted.

Usually its someone with a backhoe cut the fibre , some idiot trying to steal copper cable (usually mistaking fibre to copper) or sometimes a ship will drag its anchor over an undersea link.

If there are problems with that traceroute to be fair, not a lot you can do. There will be engineers trying to fix things anyway. Sometimes there is a natural disaster like flooding which might take down a busy link, this will be routed around till it's fixed but that makes other parts of the highway get higher traffic and you may get congestion.

Other times your isp may just get very busy e.g Sunday afternoon / evening always slows down for me. The fastest times are usually between midnight and 8 am but thats also when major maintenance tends to occur.

The only people you can talk to is your isp and they can only fix problems with their network and they are probably aware of the fault already. It may be very local (e.g the box in your street) so you should log a fault, but if you are getting outside their network forget it.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/openvisualtrace/

Here is a free tool to show you where in the world your packets are going. It won't fix anything but it might be interesting.

Linary Loc: UK

Excellent information - thank you.

In windows (DOS) the command for "traceroute" is "tracert"

maren

I have no problems with any other site. I have a router for wireless capabilities.

maren

It sounds like it from all the posts. Thanks

maren

First of all I wish you were my next door neighbor. Wow! Thank you for all your time and effort to explain a lot of things. I think I digested enough of it to check some things out. I will let you know what I can find out. Thank you again blackest!!!!!!!

dirtpusher Loc: tulsa oklahoma

Try bookmarking a isp speed test page. Then next time it does it. Check it.

maren

I will try that. Thanks dirtpusher!