EU Players unable to access Istaria websites or game

[Chasing]

Hi all

A number of ISP (Internet Service Providers) appear to have blacklisted the Istaria address. This has been preventing some ppl from accessing the websites and the game itself.

So far we have dealt with 1 person from sweden, 2 from netherlands, 1 from germany and 1 from the UK. It appears the problem is currently affecting EU players and so far at least 4 different ISP's.

We have written a page to help diagnose and fix this problem if it is occurring.

http://www.crimson-dawn.org/index.php?p=166

If you know someone that cannot currently access the websites or game please ask them follow the instructions on the above link.

Technical Bit
The DNS entries for the Istaria address range 68.142.64.* are not replicating onto some ISP's. Most likely a blacklisting problem. Therefore DNS names cannot be resolved where as IP addresses can be resolved. (Note http://mxtoolbox.com/ shows the blacklisting if you input an Istaria IP)

[Steelclaw]

Do the responses to queries to misbehaving nameservers return some other IP or a NXDOMAIN?

What are some IPs of these misbehaving nameservers?

[Chasing]

Do the responses to queries to misbehaving nameservers return some other IP or a NXDOMAIN?

What are some IPs of these misbehaving nameservers?

They arent giving back any results, as in the domain doesnt exist.

As for IP's of misbehaving name servers I would assume they are the individual nameservers for each ISP which is affected and as they replicate I don't see the relevance.

[Steelclaw]

The DNS server IPs are relevant since:
1) they might be the wrong ones
2) they are the only identifier that can be used to reliably determine if this is a transient issue
3) they are the only identifier that can be used when communicating with the ISP running them


Items 2 and 3 you probably get, though 1 is a bit more obscure. There's bits of malware that will covertly change your DNS configuration (and sometimes put stuff in your hosts file) so that some malicious party now controls what sites you visit, and if you visit the real site or some imposter. There's other malware that responds to DHCP requests and causes /other/ hosts on the network to use different network settings... like DNS servers.

Point being, there's no sense in following up with an ISP if their DNS servers aren't the ones at fault here.

[Chasing]

The DNS server IPs are relevant since:
1) they might be the wrong ones
2) they are the only identifier that can be used to reliably determine if this is a transient issue
3) they are the only identifier that can be used when communicating with the ISP running them


Items 2 and 3 you probably get, though 1 is a bit more obscure. There's bits of malware that will covertly change your DNS configuration (and sometimes put stuff in your hosts file) so that some malicious party now controls what sites you visit, and if you visit the real site or some imposter. There's other malware that responds to DHCP requests and causes /other/ hosts on the network to use different network settings... like DNS servers.

Point being, there's no sense in following up with an ISP if their DNS servers aren't the ones at fault here.

Well I don't have the specific IP's of the affected ISP DNS servers, I just fixed the problems they were having.

Only one of the affected people is online at the moment to ask and that was Bhakesh_unity. He is in Germany and using a cable provider called "Unitymedia". I believe his default DNS server IP's are listed here http://provider-stoerung.de/blog/ubersicht-dns-server/.

The other ppl that were affected were Drakaro (Sweden), Sigimund (Netherlands), Tarlin (Netherlands) and someone from the UK whose ingame name I didnt catch.

[Sigi]

I don't know if this is what you mean but following my ISp website if you want to manually configure :
nameserver 1: 195.241.77.53
nameserver 2: 195.241.77.54

Istaria was not reachable for me if it wasn't for Chasings help.
The rest of the web I use gives no problem at all.

[jerk-o]

Or they could try googles dns servers

[Chasing]

Or they could try googles dns servers

Hehe Jerko, thats one of the fixes :P

[Dakoren Ironhand]

Might be worth having mentioned that the first issue was reported on March 19th and since then the Google DNS fix has been used to solve this.

[Steelclaw]

I don't know if this is what you mean but following my ISp website if you want to manually configure :
nameserver 1: 195.241.77.53
nameserver 2: 195.241.77.54

Istaria was not reachable for me if it wasn't for Chasings help.
The rest of the web I use gives no problem at all.

Thanks, those helped.

I don't think the problem is that the istaria.com domain is being actively blocked.

Querying the NS 195.241.77.53 for the following domains all result in a timeout:

www.istaria.com
www.eurohonda.com
www.larryfels.com

All three domains are served from ns51.domaincontrol.com.

This leads me to believe that either ns51.domaincontrol.com (216.69.185.26) is unreachable from various parts of the internet, or it has somehow made its way onto an overzealous IP blacklist. In either case, the problem is well out of VI's hands.

A whole bunch of GoDaddy domains are hosted from the same server and are similarly impacted. Whoops.

[Sigi]

Glad to be of some help A pitty though that you can't do anything to clear the problem.

[Amerelium]

I'm in Norway, and could not access any istaria content today - was on a couple of days ago. I fixed it a bit more simple than mentioned in Chasing's page: I just added the google DNS addresses into the DNS TCP/IP settings in Windows, network connection settings. Did the trick.
I assume this will be resolved in some other way though, on the ISP side... (?)

[Chasing]

This leads me to believe that either ns51.domaincontrol.com (216.69.185.26) is unreachable from various parts of the internet, or it has somehow made its way onto an overzealous IP blacklist. In either case, the problem is well out of VI's hands.

I don't agree that the problem is out of VI's hands. Surely they pay money to GoDaddy to host the websites etc. If my websites were being blocked for some reason then I would be kicking the door down of the hosting company to get them to clear any blacklisting entries (and to try and prevent it from happening again).

Another way to look at this is that there are also paying customers who cannot access the websites and/or game. They have paid for the service therefore Vi has a responsibilty to attempt to resolve the problems. Also any potential new customers on the affected ISP's cannot see the websites so there is a potential loss of revenue to the business.

*Rant Off*

Anyway, I can see that the blacklisted entry I saw yesterday on the search tool has been cleared now. Lets hope that this replicates around the affected ISP's and clears problem (thats assuming that this was the only blacklisted entry and the blacklisted entry was the cause of the problem in the first place).

[LOVWYRM]

I agree with you Chasing.

And thank you very much for the work you did to help us!

[Sigi]

I agree with you Chasing.

And thank you very much for the work you did to help us!

I totally agree - on both sentences.

[skott_karlsson]

I don't agree that the problem is out of VI's hands. Surely they pay money to GoDaddy to host the websites etc. If my websites were being blocked for some reason then I would be kicking the door down of the hosting company to get them to clear any blacklisting entries (and to try and prevent it from happening again).

Another way to look at this is that there are also paying customers who cannot access the websites and/or game. They have paid for the service therefore Vi has a responsibilty to attempt to resolve the problems. Also any potential new customers on the affected ISP's cannot see the websites so there is a potential loss of revenue to the business.

Chasing has a very valid point here.

[LOVWYRM]

I*ve gotten lots of queries for help the last days. (newest 1 h ago)

Thy to Chasing I could give them the links- those who had no access to game AND forum I could help via skype or e-mail (not forum pm).

But I`m still missing players- order was quite empty.

So pls VI: care for the prob, and all players who are missing friends- contact them. Or write something on guild webside.

It would be quite annoying to loose players due to this issue!

[Sigi]

Lov it is good you have so much people contacting you. This problem affects all *.istaria .com so people are unable to visit the forum or filing a ticket. I thought at first that the server was down and I wonder how many people still think the same.

[Amerelium]

Just got reply from my ISP - they've got no problem visiting https://play.istaria.com - strange...

[Chasing]

Just got reply from my ISP - they've got no problem visiting https://play.istaria.com - strange...

Some ISP's have multiple DNS servers, they probably havent queried the right one.

Also

I've only heard of one more person on Chaos so far (that has contacted us directly) and that is Ssaeros_unity (Norway).