[outages] WorldNIC/Network Solutions DNS or network issues?

Jeremy Chadwick jdc at koitsu.org
Thu May 16 00:50:39 EDT 2013


Came across this one right now (21:48 PDT (UTC-0700)) while trying to
look up some tracking information on an Ontrac package I have.  Ontrac
uses WorldNIC/Netsol as their authoritative nameservers.

I wasn't able to resolve www.ontrac.com from my Comcast connection at
home (Mountain View, CA), while I saw intermittent DNS failures when
trying to do resolution from my VPS (Sylmar, CA), so I poked at things a
bit.  First from my VPS:

$ host www.ontrac.com
www.ontrac.com has address 12.38.237.1
Host www.ontrac.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

And now from home:

$ host www.ontrac.com
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

$ dig @a.gtld-servers.net ns ontrac.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-P2 <<>> @a.gtld-servers.net ns ontrac.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 33697
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ontrac.com.                    IN      NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
ontrac.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns89.worldnic.com.
ontrac.com.             172800  IN      NS      ns90.worldnic.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns89.worldnic.com.      172800  IN      A       205.178.190.45
ns90.worldnic.com.      172800  IN      A       206.188.198.45

;; Query time: 97 msec
;; SERVER: 192.5.6.30#53(192.5.6.30)
;; WHEN: Wed May 15 21:38:12 2013
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 107


$ dig @205.178.190.45 any www.ontrac.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-P2 <<>> @205.178.190.45 any www.ontrac.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached


$ dig @205.188.198.45 any www.ontrac.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-P2 <<>> @205.188.198.45 any www.ontrac.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached


$ mtr 205.178.190.45

                                                  Packets               Pings
 Host                                           Loss%   Snt   Rcv  Last   Avg  Best  Wrst
 1. gw.home.lan                                  0.0%    11    11   0.3   0.3   0.2   0.4
 2. c-67-180-84-1.hsd1.ca.comcast.net            0.0%    11    11  30.1  22.8  14.0  30.1
 3. te-0-0-0-12-ur05.santaclara.ca.sfba.comcast  0.0%    11    11   9.3  10.3   9.3  11.2
 4. te-1-1-0-13-ar01.sfsutro.ca.sfba.comcast.ne  0.0%    11    11  15.2  13.3  10.6  15.8
 5. he-1-5-0-0-cr01.sanjose.ca.ibone.comcast.ne  0.0%    11    11  21.0  21.7  20.5  23.6
 6. er1-tengig2-4.sanjoseequinix.savvis.net      0.0%    11    11  12.9  13.0  11.9  14.1
 7. 206.28.98.70                                 0.0%    11    11  14.5  19.2  11.8  80.0
 8. cr2-tengig0-7-3-0.sanfrancisco.savvis.net    0.0%    11    11  14.7  21.6  14.7  63.0
 9. cr1-ten-0-13-1-0.dck.savvis.net              0.0%    11    11  91.6  91.6  90.0  94.1
10. hr1-tengig-2-0-0.sterling2dc2.savvis.net     0.0%    11    11  92.1  90.9  90.2  92.1
11. ???


$ mtr 205.188.198.45

                                                  Packets               Pings
 Host                                           Loss%   Snt   Rcv  Last   Avg  Best  Wrst
 1. gw.home.lan                                  0.0%    11    11   0.4   0.3   0.2   0.4
 2. c-67-180-84-1.hsd1.ca.comcast.net            0.0%    11    11  31.3  26.8  16.3  39.3
 3. te-0-0-0-12-ur05.santaclara.ca.sfba.comcast  0.0%    11    11  15.4  12.5   9.8  15.6
 4. te-1-1-0-1-ar01.sfsutro.ca.sfba.comcast.net  0.0%    11    11  14.7  15.2  11.4  28.3
 5. he-1-7-0-0-cr01.sanjose.ca.ibone.comcast.ne  0.0%    11    11  21.6  19.8  16.2  24.1
 6. be-10-pe02.11greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net  0.0%    11    11  16.4  16.7  15.1  19.4
 7. 66.185.150.117                               0.0%    11    11  16.7  17.2  14.2  32.7
 8. bb1-sjg-xe-1-2-0.atdn.net                    0.0%    11    11  16.5  16.0  14.5  17.5
 9. bb2-ash-xe-0-0-3.atdn.net                    0.0%    11    11  86.9  86.8  85.1  90.3
10. pop1-ash-xe-1-0-0.atdn.net                   0.0%    11    11  89.0  86.2  84.7  89.0
11. dar1-dtc-xe-1-2-0.atdn.net                   0.0%    11    11  87.6  90.0  84.4 105.7
12. gear1-dtc-lag0.net.aol.com                   0.0%    11    11  86.0  86.2  84.8  90.1
13. edge4-dtc-ae0-staging.net.aol.com            0.0%    11    11  86.0  90.7  85.1 133.3
14. ???

Obviously I don't have return path traces.

I repeated the digs from my VPS, and they work but only intermittently.
So I'm guessing some kind of GSLB or network interface round-robining
may be impacting things, but only via some routes/paths.

Sorry if I've forgotten some information or a step, doing too many
things at once right now... :-)

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at koitsu.org |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                http://jdc.koitsu.org/ |
| Mountain View, CA, US                                            |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.             PGP 4BD6C0CB |




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