BajaNomad - More than a few timeouts..........

More than a few timeouts..........

Hook - 7-14-2007 at 10:08 PM

...........while trying to access Nomads today. Anyone else?

bajadogs - 7-14-2007 at 10:12 PM

y tu. couple of times in the A.M.

Paula - 7-14-2007 at 10:12 PM

yep.

Diver - 7-14-2007 at 10:13 PM

Me too.

DavidT - 7-14-2007 at 10:24 PM

Maybe the server is now on Mexican time :biggrin:

Debra - 7-14-2007 at 10:51 PM

And I thought it was my brand spanking new computer, fully equipped with DSL :fire:

sure glad I didn't give into my frustration and toss it in my back 40 :lol:

Bedman - 7-14-2007 at 11:29 PM

I had an interesting occurence today, too. Along with slow access to Nomads board.....

After opening "Todays Posts" and getting the laundry list screen of todays posts. When I moved my cursor over the assorted posts and across the middle of the screen a Banner would pop up for "BajaBound Auto Insurance" and obscure two posts made by members.

A little annoying and I couldn't access those two posts made by Nomads. I just figured it was a new advertising scheme for Bajabound.

Bedman

BajaNomad - 7-15-2007 at 12:07 AM

I'm not aware of the server having issues today.

I am aware of users reporting slowness loading pages because of a change I made in the page script regarding a "critical vulnerability" security issue with Flash software. Thread here has more info:
http://forums.bajanomad.com/viewthread.php?tid=25643

Quote:

Originally posted by Bedman
When I moved my cursor over the assorted posts and across the middle of the screen a Banner would pop up for "BajaBound Auto Insurance" and obscure two posts made by members.

I'd be interested in knowing which operating system, browser - and browser version - you're using?

While there is a new ad from BajaBound, it's not set to popout and block content anywhere.

They've provided me with the ad, and it resides on my equipment. They don't have the access to go in and change what is being delivered on the pages here right now.

The staff of BajaBound has been very, very understanding and sensitive to having a presence here that is respected and certainly not invasive for the visitors here.

The page scripting change (requiring the newer version of Flash) is my decision alone, and I would feel it unethical to not update the requirement for anyone using Flash software via this web site. If you're using Flash, my strong opinion is that you should upgrade it.

If you don't want to use Flash, then uninstall it, block or disable it. There are references with links regarding these things on the other thread.

Many people don't realize their browser software came with Flash already. Only thing is, they should now either upgrade or disable the Flash software.

Notes:
- The security issue was announced 4 days ago (Jul 10, '07).
- 98.6% of USA/Canada Internet users already have and are using Flash.

--
Doug

Hook - 7-15-2007 at 07:10 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bedman
I had an interesting occurence today, too. Along with slow access to Nomads board.....

After opening "Todays Posts" and getting the laundry list screen of todays posts. When I moved my cursor over the assorted posts and across the middle of the screen a Banner would pop up for "BajaBound Auto Insurance" and obscure two posts made by members.

A little annoying and I couldn't access those two posts made by Nomads. I just figured it was a new advertising scheme for Bajabound.
Bedman

That does sound like a browser issue.

I tell ya, you still have to have IE on your computer even if you have been a fan of Netscape or Firefox. IE is much more consistent in displaying ALL the content on web pages, IME. I am often amazed at how somethings just dont work or dont show up with even the latest version of Firefox.

I was on a real estate site recently and the little "sold" banners would not display using FF. Not a cache issue either. Very disappointing when I called the agent.

I have also encountered situations where FF doesnt display all the fields needed to make purchases on website.

But I REALLY hate the standard interface of the newest version of IE. So hard to find anything..........

bajaguy - 7-15-2007 at 07:23 AM

I had problems last night around 9:30PM

slow loading and timeouts here,k

Keri - 7-15-2007 at 07:37 AM

Hook - 7-15-2007 at 07:53 AM

Yep, it happening frequently this AM. FF 2.0.0.5, Cox Cable in OC, Doug.

BajaNomad - 7-15-2007 at 10:25 AM

Right after I made the post above last night, I started to experience access issues to the server myself.

It was a datacenter issue. In fact, the datacenter's sites were inaccessible for a while last night at that time also. If anyone noticed, it was only the forums.bajanomad.com portion of the site (at least what I experienced), and not the other portions of the bajanomad.com site - as they are on different servers in different datacenters in different cities, states, etc. (San Diego and Atlanta).

And no cries of "New York City???" - or Atlanta in this case, etc....

I would be interested if this access to the site issue continues for anyone going forward.... thanks for noting it to me.

--
Doug

toneart - 7-15-2007 at 10:56 AM

I had the same problems yesterday evening. After asking lots of questions on the string that warned of the Flash security hole, I did the upgrade. That is when all the time outs started occurring on BajaNomad. I thought, oh, oh.........what did I do wrong? Also, my ISP, Comcast Cable continued to divert me to the Flash update page even after I updated it twice. (I sent the 2nd one to trash).

Doug,
Today everything is working fine for me on the BajaNomad site. I am using Firefox Mozilla. I have not tried IE yet today, but last evening the Nomad site was stalling out on both browsers.

Looks like you have corrected the problem. Thank you, Doug.

BajaNomad - 7-15-2007 at 11:38 AM

Official notice from the datacenter just in:

--------------------------

On Saturday afternoon July 14th, 2007 a customer located within our network was targeted by a massive DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. This attack reached magnitudes of 2Gbps at times and was carried out in a very sophisticated manor. This was one of the largest attacks seen in our company history.

Our networking team was onsite within minutes of the initial report. The first priority was to determine the target of the attack. Once this was done, the target was taken offline and security measures were implemented to try and stop the spread of the attack. After all steps had been taken locally to stem the attack, the Networking team contacted our upstream carriers and enlisted their assistance to "black-hole" the offending IP addresses from which the attack was believed to have been originated.

Even with these measures in place the attack still caused issues on the network. Our engineers adjusted traffic routes and even removed entire upstream paths in an effort to stem the residual effects of the attack.

In the early morning hours of July 15th, the attack was considered under control but lingering effects could still be felt depending on where specific internet traffic was destined. Our network engineers continue their work today to resolve all remaining issues and to return network performance to 100%. Minor BGP recalculations can be expected during the daytime hours Sunday as upstream connection and routes are brought back online.

For those that have experienced them, DDoS attacks can be one of the most difficult networking issues to deal with. We have been making modifications to our network to allow us the ability to deal with these issue more effectively for the past 60 days. These changes include:

1. Deploying our dual Proventia G2000 series IDS/IPS devices to cover a larger portion of our network. When complete, we will be able to provide more protection and enhanced defense against future DDoS attacks.

2. Only 10 days ago we purchased an additional OC48 of traffic from AT&T. This connection will be live within the next 60 days and will add even greater connectivity to our current BGP blend.

3. We are also upgrading other upstream connections to OC48 size so that we are able to handle any eventuality that may arise in the future.

With these changes in place, our network will be more robust than ever before.

Don Alley - 7-15-2007 at 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by grover

Quote:

Originally posted by BajaNomad...carried out in a very sophisticated manor...

Oso - 7-16-2007 at 07:32 AM

Booting up seems slow lately but doesn't seem to have anything directly to do with this website. I haven't noticed anything about the flash. But...
I have Zone Alarm which is always catching Backweb trying to access. I always hit deny but I can't get Backweb to go away and leave me alone. It keeps trying to gain access every time I turn the pc on.
Now ZA is identifying a new thing from an "unknown source"... I keep getting this:

SL2.tmp is trying to launch C:\windows\system 32\msiexe or use another program to gain access to privileged resources

Anybody know WTF is up whith that?

Cypress - 7-16-2007 at 10:44 AM

Thought it was just my old clinker of a computer.

oldhippie - 7-16-2007 at 10:52 AM

It appeared to me that the trouble a couple of days ago had to do with the DNS. Maybe the ISP changed nameservers and it took awhile for caches to clear and info to propagate. Not sure though.

bajalou - 7-16-2007 at 12:43 PM

I use Windows XP home, with FireFox - latest version and I have the Nomad site for "Today's Posts" time out fairly often - at least once every couple days. Some days it persists, but most of the time a couple "Try Again" and no more problems. Most of the time I'm on Telnor DSL, but it also happens when I'm in the old country at a motel. ????

oldhippie - 7-16-2007 at 02:18 PM

Could be, I think I pinged the domain name and it didn't translate. Not sure, I was trying a lot of things to see what was going on.

toneart - 7-16-2007 at 10:27 PM

I too have Zone Alarm and I keep getting what they call a "Smart Defense Advisor". It says, "ZoneAlarm prevented your computer from accessing port 53 on a DNS server."

From what I can understand, my computer is blocking outbound communications to a Domain Name Server (DNS). Its function is to convert a domain's IP address into a recognizable name.

When I get into ZoneAlarm's report, it shows my IP# was blocked from sending to DNS 68.87.76.178:53. The name is:
cns.sanjose.ca.sanfran.comcast.net.

Comcast is my ISP. According to the report, this DNS has been prevented from my transmissions for several weeks, but starting yesterday, coinciding with my upgrade of Flash, I have started getting ZA's advisories. It also says, "No security breach has occurred. Your computer is safe.

What is going on? Is this the "attack" that has been referred to in this string? Is it related to Flash or is that a coincidence?

Everything is working normally today, including this BajaNomad site.

toneart - 7-17-2007 at 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by lencho

Quote:

Originally posted by toneart
I too have Zone Alarm and I keep getting what they call a "Smart Defense Advisor". It says, "ZoneAlarm prevented your computer from accessing port 53 on a DNS server."

That doesn't seem very smart. The only reason I can think for your firewall to block DNS requests (essential for Internet work) would be if some process were making them so frequently that it looked like a virus trying to do a denial of service attack on the DNS server. Weird...

Hmm. It might get suspicious if the DNS server weren't responding to requests and they were repeated for that reason. I've never used Zone Alarm... Are you sure that's a working DNS server? Can you clear that listing in Zone Alarm so it starts fresh?

--Larry

Larry,
Thank you for helping with this. I don't want to bore other Nomads by continuing this, or by testing your patience. I have been continuing because it was a concern of the BajaNomad administration and also those who initially posted to this string. So....

Admittedly, I am not much of a techie but I learn under fire. I will call Comcast tech support, since the DNS seems to be one of their IPs. It hasn't really prevented me from accessing my Comcast home page or navigating to any website I choose. All I can think is the DNS my IP is trying to access is not necessary, or that ZoneAlarm is an overly sensitive bot.