There is a thread on NANOG at the minute about a chap in the states having difficulty reaching certain routes over Comcast. He has the same symptoms as yourself (although his issue is a little more diverse as I believe he has several routes to travel over and only some of the routes aren't working).

Maybe you could try using a different DNS server. Change your local host DNS server to say the OpenDNS servers 208.67.222.222 and/or 208.67.220.220 (http://www.opendns.com/). I was having some issues at home with BT and changed my client DNS settings to use OpenDNS and now I have no more issues.

Admittedly I didn't look into it to much as I didn't want to give BT any more of my time so I may of been having a different problem to you. You seem to be surfing through The Carphone Warehouse so it could be a problem with them? Stabbing in the dark here, once you have gotten across the pond (hops 7-8) on the paypal.co.uk example, you spend the reaming 10 hops jumping around Level3 which seems a little weird like there is a problem with the route you are taking?

My results are below when trace routing from my home with BT, and although I never reach the end I can get on paypal.co.uk just fine;

Tracing route to paypal.co.uk [66.211.168.114] over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 81 ms 99 ms 99 ms BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254] 2 31 ms 31 ms 31 ms 217.47.93.186 3 30 ms 31 ms 31 ms 217.47.93.161 4 40 ms 42 ms 45 ms 217.47.90.10 5 30 ms 30 ms 31 ms 217.41.177.5 6 235 ms 34 ms 31 ms 217.41.177.65 7 32 ms 31 ms 30 ms 217.41.177.146 8 38 ms 36 ms 38 ms 217.41.177.34 9 40 ms 36 ms 38 ms 217.47.90.49 10 37 ms 35 ms 31 ms core1-pos12-6.faraday.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.4.12 9] 11 43 ms 47 ms 47 ms 62.172.103.29 12 43 ms 41 ms 40 ms transit1-xe0-0-0.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [62.6.200. 106] 13 44 ms 42 ms 43 ms t2c1-ge13-0-0.uk-eal.eu.bt.net [166.49.168.21] 14 43 ms 43 ms 42 ms t2c2-p3-2.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.164.138] 15 38 ms 34 ms 36 ms t2a1-ge7-0-0.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.135.110]

16 36 ms 35 ms 33 ms 195.66.224.130 17 40 ms 40 ms 43 ms p5-0-0d0.rar1.london-en.uk.xo.net [71.5.174.133]

18 188 ms 116 ms 118 ms p1-0-0d0.rar1.nyc-ny.us.xo.net [65.106.0.118] 19 113 ms 116 ms 149 ms te-3-1-0.rar3.nyc-ny.us.xo.net [65.106.1.18] 20 124 ms 129 ms 131 ms 207.88.14.62.ptr.us.xo.net [207.88.14.62] 21 166 ms 165 ms 173 ms 207.88.184.6.ptr.us.xo.net [207.88.184.6] 22 * * * Request timed out. 23 * * * Request timed out. 24 * * * Request timed out. 25 * * * Request timed out. 26 * * * Request timed out. 27 * * * Request timed out. 28 * * * Request timed out. 29 * * * Request timed out. 30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

James,

You haven't said anything about your line statistics or where you live in relation to your telephone exchange so we don't know if this is relevant or not but if you are only getting 200-500Kbps, your router is struggling in some way. Possible fixes are:

1. If you are far from your telephone exchange (over about 5KM) the line attenuation/capacitance/inductance will make a difference so you have to make sure your house wiring is up to the job and won't contribute to the degradation. Use an iPlate or, better yet, a filter faceplate on your master socket. Despite the hype surrounding iPlates, a filter faceplate will provide a better gain in SNR. 2. I presume the speeds you mention are ADSL connection speeds and not data speeds. If your ADSL connection speed is way above your data speed, complain to AOL. Or better yet, try an ISP that will actually do something about the problem without you having to spend a lot of time on the phone trying useless things like disabling firewalls. 3. The MTU size on AOL always had to be 1400 in the past. I don't know if this is still the case since the takeover by Carphone Warehouse but you might want to try changing the MTU to 1400 on the WAN configuration page of your DG834 if it's set to something else. This is the one thing I can think of that can cause particular sites to break. 4. Try another router. After 6 years, your router may have had enough of life. Components inside may have changed their value enough to cause it to go unreliable and power surges on the telephone line may also have caused component degradation.

Best of luck.

Ken

On 25/01/2010 19:34, James Elsey wrote:

I have a terrible connection anyway, around 0.2-0.5Mb at the best of times (was I refered to as the "pauper" or "peasent" of the connection ladder?) Over the past few weeks I'm completely unable to access particular websites, most notably Paypal, national-lotter.co.uk, LinkedIn, and pretty much 50% of any search results in google I want to go to.

This is happening across all machines on my network, linux and windows alike, wired and wireless, and also my iphone(unless I put it on 3g)

I have a netgear DG834T router, about 6-7 years old. There are no blocked sites and as far as I know the configuration hasn't be altered in some time, so no reason for it to suddenly alter.

I am on(...dont laugh)..AOL..

Traceroutes below, as you can see google is fine, but paypal and linkedin are no-goes. any suggestions?

James Elsey wrote:

Hey Guys,

I'm experiencing rather odd behaviour with my internet connection at home recently, and I'm hoping some of the BT / Telecoms guys out there may have some pointers.

I have a terrible connection anyway, around 0.2-0.5Mb at the best of times (was I refered to as the "pauper" or "peasent" of the connection ladder?) Over the past few weeks I'm completely unable to access particular websites, most notably Paypal, national-lotter.co.uk, LinkedIn, and pretty much 50% of any search results in google I want to go to.

This is happening across all machines on my network, linux and windows alike, wired and wireless, and also my iphone(unless I put it on 3g)

I have a netgear DG834T router, about 6-7 years old. There are no blocked sites and as far as I know the configuration hasn't be altered in some time, so no reason for it to suddenly alter.

I am on(...dont laugh)..AOL..

Why not?

Traceroutes below, as you can see google is fine, but paypal and linkedin are no-goes. any suggestions?

Sorry, must suggest you get a proper ISP. Get a free account with (say) GMX - www.gmx.com You have a choice of several different methods of connecting, including webmail and POP3.

I got straight in to your targets on GMX (webmail) and with Paston (Thunderbird under Xandros), using an Eee and a Vodafone dongle with only GPRS coverage here.