For four months dozens of our users who are Comcast subscribers have had difficulty reaching St. Olaf College's and Carleton College's network services. We have worked through everything we can think of with our Onvoy (regional ISP) network engineers. We have isolated the problem a couple of Comcast's IP subnets, but need a contact within Comcast to further troubleshoot. The behavior in a nutshell: -- User A on Comcast Subnet B browses to www.stolaf.edu (http or https, other web sites on-site and @carleton.edu behave the same). Our access_log shows an initial "GET /" of our homepage, then very slow (if any) subsequent requests (for our stylesheet or homepage images). Ping's look fine; traceroute's look as reasonable. Telnet's to port 80 and other services do seem to respond, albeit very slowly. User A has the same problem with access @carleton.edu but can access everything else (including other Onvoy customers) without any trouble whatsoever. If User A then removes his Linksys router and connects his computer directly to the cable modem, he acquires an IP address in Comcast Subnet C. Then, everything works fine, including access to www.stolaf.edu and www.carleton.edu. He puts the Linksys router back in (which still has the IP address in Comcast Subnet B), and the problem returns. The problem IP subnets are completely consistent. Known WORKING IP Subnets: 75.72.0.0, 24.x Known NON-WORKING IP Subnets: 71.x, 73.x -- We have already attempted the usual troubleshooting and have eliminated user problems, computer problems, server problems, cable modem problems, and Linksys router problems. Traceroutes have been somewhat inconclusive since Onvoy blocks ICMP within its network. So, why just St. Olaf and Carleton services? We are on a shared physical link from Onvoy, though on different VLANs. Onvoy has verified everything they can (routing, packet loss, etc.) between them and us, and I'm not sure what additional questions I can ask of them to test. Suggestions? Maybe Comcast has a broken transparent proxy on part(s) of their network? But they have told us they have nothing like this anywhere on their network. Maybe there is some asymmetric routing somewhere, though all the investigation there has come up empty. A third possibility is some kind of packet loss, but there is little if any evidence of that. So, we are really at a loss and seek any suggestions you all might have. And a contact in Comcast network engineering would be especially useful to continue our troubleshooting. With thanks, Craig -- Craig D. Rice Associate Director of Information Systems cdr@stolaf.edu Information and Instructional Technologies +1 507 786-3631 St. Olaf College +1 507 786-3096 FAX 1510 St. Olaf Avenue http://www.stolaf.edu/people/cdr Northfield, MN 55057-1097 USA