The Stovebolt Site Forums The Back Office IT Short Bus A few issues still.

I'm going to respond with some traceroutes.

Here's how the internet works. Your computer makes a request on the stovebolt website (please show me this page). That request is passed through your internet provider (A), who passes the request to his internet provider (B). That provider then asks his provider (C) do you know where this site is? C then says, yes, and I will deliver it. C delivers the request to D who then delivers it to E who then delivers it to F etc., etc., etc. until the request ends up at www.stovebolt.com.

Stovebolt.com then responds (Here's the page you asked for). That response then goes through etc.,etc., etc., to F, to E, to D, to C, to B, to A, who provides it to you.

All of this is done by machines called routers. And, each router asks "what's the best route to this host?" The router that responds, "I am!" gets the request. If a router is down, some other, less optimal route to stovebolt will end up being used. And the return route may not be the same as the sending route.

Think of it like short haul trucks picking up a package at your house, delivering to their local terminal where it get sorted and then routed to its destination. There may be two trucks involved in delivering it. There may be ten. Depends on the delivery methods and practices of the various trucking companies involved, where bridges are closed, or routes are closed, etc. and how far away the destination is. Obviously, the best route is interstate highways but sometimes secondary or even tertiary routes must be used..

One thing all methods have in common is that, no matter where the request begins, they always end up at the same place (www.stovebolt.com), and they likely share several stops along the way (usually the ones closest to stovebolt.) You should notice that you see 38.140.105.74 in a lot (but not all) of these traces.

The default timeout for traceroutes is 4 seconds. If it takes longer than that to get a response, the trace moves to the next router. Timeouts are represented by the empty lines in the trace.

Now, this is a traceroute from Frankfurt, Germany.
And this is a traceroute from Bangkok, Thailand.
And this is a traceroute from New York City.
And here's one from my laptop.
If you look at my traceroute, you will notice something strange.

38.140.105.74 hands the request off to 38.140.105.66 (another router on the same network) which then hands it BACK to 38.140.105.74. That's strange. That may indicate a problem at that network.That is PSINet, Inc. But, I can guarantee that they won't talk to me, because I am not their customer. (I've tried this numerous times in the past.)

The stovebolt server is working fine. The routes to the server are not. In other words, there's not a single thing we can do to fix this problem. We just have to suffer through it.