For a long time now I've had a very strange problem with my wi-fi network at home. I have a BT Voyager 2100 ADSL modem and an iMac, ageing PowerBook and a PC that connect to it wirelessly. The problem is that I can never access a small number of certain websites because they always time out.
There's nothing apparent that connects these websites in any way. Some examples that I've come across are www.adobe.com, www.microsoft.com, www.portsmouthguildhall.co.uk (a local venue) and subtraction.com (a blog). I can ping some of the sites without problems; there are no timeouts. In fact, I used to be able to access subtraction.com and can still get its RSS feed. I just can't view the site in a web browser any more. This is a very isolated problem—for the majority of my Internet use everything works fine.
It's clearly not a problem with the individual computers because they all have this problem, so it must be a problem downstream with my router or even ISP. I've upgraded the router to the latest firmware and tried resetting it, but it didn't fix the problem.
How can I even diagnose where the problem is? I'm at a loss as to know where to start! Are there any UNIX networking commands that I can use (I have Mac OS X)?
Thanks for any help.
EDIT: Following Alnitak's suggestion, I tried a traceroute and ping with adobe.com. As you can see, the traceroute never gets there:
$ traceroute adobe.com
traceroute to adobe.com (192.150.18.117), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 voyager.home (192.168.1.1) 1.975 ms 1.505 ms 1.574 ms
2 lo0-plusnet.ptn-ag2.plus.net (195.166.128.53) 28.476 ms 47.139 ms 28.036 ms
3 ge0-0-0-204.ptn-gw02.plus.net (84.92.3.93) 28.520 ms 37.297 ms 33.186 ms
4 te2-2.pte-gw2.plus.net (212.159.1.106) 35.670 ms 36.262 ms 34.995 ms
5 80.239.193.141 (80.239.193.141) 33.932 ms 28.600 ms 28.764 ms
6 ldn-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.90) 29.649 ms 28.149 ms 30.857 ms
7 ldn-b5-link.telia.net (80.91.249.178) 27.991 ms 28.014 ms 28.490 ms
8 verio-129583-ldn-b5.telia.net (213.248.100.50) 28.468 ms 29.286 ms 31.702 ms
9 ae-1.r23.londen03.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.237) 30.871 ms 29.295 ms ae-1.r22.londen03.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.233) 28.614 ms
10 ae-0.r22.londen03.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.85) 29.732 ms as-0.r20.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.254) 108.909 ms ae-0.r22.londen03.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.85) 28.505 ms
11 ae-0.r21.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.26) 109.164 ms as-0.r20.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.254) 104.860 ms ae-0.r21.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.26) 111.253 ms
12 as-0.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.9) 104.777 ms ae-0.r21.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.26) 109.973 ms as-0.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.9) 108.774 ms
13 as-0.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.9) 103.691 ms ae-3.r21.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.128) 104.958 ms as-0.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.9) 104.455 ms
14 as-3.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.167) 197.595 ms ae-3.r21.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.128) 105.027 ms 106.565 ms
15 * as-3.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.167) 179.946 ms *
16 * te-5-3.r02.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (128.241.219.86) 176.374 ms *
17 * * te-5-3.r02.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (128.241.219.86) 189.724 ms
18 * * *
19 * * *
20 * * *
^C
—Now trying a ping from hop 14 onwards. As you can see, the last ping has 20% packet loss:
$ ping -s 1492 as-3.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
PING as-3.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.167): 1492 data bytes
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=214.555 ms
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=215.339 ms
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=221.211 ms
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=224.296 ms
^C
--- as-3.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 214.555/218.850/224.296/4.062 ms
$ ping -s 1492 as-3.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
PING as-3.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.167): 1492 data bytes
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=299.852 ms
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=326.598 ms
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=243.278 ms
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=214.610 ms
1500 bytes from 129.250.2.167: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=232.900 ms
^C
--- as-3.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 214.610/263.448/326.598/42.517 ms
$ ping -s 1492 te-5-3.r02.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net
PING te-5-3.r02.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (128.241.219.86): 1492 data bytes
1500 bytes from 128.241.219.86: icmp_seq=0 ttl=245 time=349.851 ms
1500 bytes from 128.241.219.86: icmp_seq=1 ttl=245 time=270.748 ms
1500 bytes from 128.241.219.86: icmp_seq=2 ttl=245 time=334.406 ms
1500 bytes from 128.241.219.86: icmp_seq=3 ttl=245 time=220.046 ms
^C
--- te-5-3.r02.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 220.046/293.763/349.851/51.869 ms
$ ping -s 1492 te-5-3.r02.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net
PING te-5-3.r02.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (128.241.219.86): 1492 data bytes
1500 bytes from 128.241.219.86: icmp_seq=0 ttl=245 time=472.908 ms
1500 bytes from 128.241.219.86: icmp_seq=1 ttl=245 time=228.290 ms
1500 bytes from 128.241.219.86: icmp_seq=2 ttl=245 time=231.048 ms
1500 bytes from 128.241.219.86: icmp_seq=3 ttl=245 time=229.906 ms
^C
--- te-5-3.r02.snjsca04.us.ce.gin.ntt.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 20% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 228.290/290.538/472.908/105.296 ms