If you're hosted at Servelink, you might want to check your store's domain name at one of the remote DNS test services such as LeafDNS.com, DNSChecker.org, etc.

We're seeing the Servelink name servers ns3.servelink.com and ns4.servelink.com have been unreachable from many (but not all) networks since around 1:00 PM CST on 2/5/2021.

This has resulted in customer complaints, low transaction volumes, and other issues since Friday.

While your store might be visible from your office location, it may not be visible to most others. A screen shot of our status from DNSChecker.org is below.



Servelink support advised via the ticketing system that while they've gotten a few complaints from other store owners, they believe it seems like an external issue that is not related to their hosting service.

My guess is that someone might have caused the problem by changing a firewall setting on the Servelink DNS servers, but who knows.

This has affected us for 24 hours now. Weekends are the busiest for us so this is really hurting :(

Larry

We're having the same problem since yesterday.

I'm sure they will figure it out.

I checked my website and the only spots that connect are Portugal and Australia.

Nothing in the USA.

Yes.... orders are VERY slow today.

Customers say they can't get to our website.

Patrick

So far the only response that we've received via the Servelink ticketing system suggests that the Admins haven't necessarily made it a priority to troubleshoot this.

Hi there

Yes, we’ve had a few reports like this from others too, but so far we’ve yet to uncover any issue on our systems. This feels like some external issue. At the present your site looks OK and has been for some time, which is good but makes it more difficult to detect any problems. We are continuing to monitor.

Regards

19 of my websites have been down two nights in a row. They are back up the next morning, and I'm getting exactly the same response. It's very frustrating for me as I'm sure it is for them.

I can't speak for Servelink but from your location to the server, the IP packets will bounce round the world via different routers. If one of these routers between you and the server is problematic then it can cause you to not be able to access the server. I think that's just how the internet works and it's not necessarily the fault of the server, nor is it something they can just "fix". This is my take anyway but we'll wait to see what they say.

Vince

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This morning (Sunday 2/7/2017) we're seeing that the Servelink name servers are accessible, and for now things seem normal.

However this also happened yesterday morning, and by late afternoon our site was offline again for most networks.

You might continue to check your store URL periodically at test sites such as DNSChecker.org

Is there anything to be done about this then? Servelink servers have been super dependable for me. It appears to be a worldwide problem - not a Servelink problem. Just to clarify.

If you are using MS Windows and open a Command Prompt (just type "cmd" in the "Type here to search" thingie ) and then enter...

tracert yourstoreurl.com

Then you should get a list of the hops from you to the server and that should show you which one is failing. That information may help Servelink know which router is causing the problem but again, I'm not sure it's necessarily something Servelink can fix themselves.

Vince

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Vince, thanks for this.

Our business office was able to access the store during most of the partial outage while numerous customers, and our remote fulfillment center, could not.

Should the issue arise again, we'll try to get a few of those who can't access our site to run the traceroute and see if we can find a common factor. Unfortunately most of our customers won't be computer savvy enough to help.

We spot checked several other stores (out of 100+ URLs) who share our IP address at the web host and found that during the partial outage we could not access those stores from our office, nor were their name servers ns3.servelink.com and ns4.servelink.com accessible from most networks according to dnschecker.org.

We also spot checked competitors and others not hosted by our web host and saw no issues there.

Thankfully the issue seems to be gone as of today 2/8/2021.

Vince,

Out of curiosity, today (with our store accessible) we ran a traceroute from our office to the website. We also ran a traceroute to a couple of other stores hosted by our web host.

Per the image below, every traceroute timed out after reaching 192.95.96.30, an IP hosted by Datacate Inc.

Information found online suggests that, as our web host support staff have been saying, the culprit could possibly be a faulty firewall setting or some other issue at Datacate.

The question remains: how to fix this sort of issue if indeed it's the root cause of our partial outages?

I'd be interested to hear if others are seeing the same timeout at 192.95.96.30 when they run traceroutes to their stores.



EDIT TO ADD: it looks like Datacate might be the colocation center where our web host and others operate, so it's not entirely clear that the root cause is external.

For comparison, here's a more normal looking traceroute from our office to a competitor's website.

I just did a tracing route test and mine timed out exactly the same way after reaching 192.95.96.30

Patrick

I find it interesting that a traceroute to the colocation center website datacate.net 23.249.1.147 completes normally, while a traceroute to another Datacate customer such as bluedag.com 23.249.1.97 also times out at the data center, one hop after 192.95.96.30.

It might be good to know if other Datacate customers have seen recent partial outages.

That tracert to cloghog.com is absolutely fine, but of course I don't think you are actually experiencing any problems at the moment so that's what we would expect. When it gets more interesting is when it stops somewhere en-route and that's really the purpose of the trace. If, oh I don't know, say a camper van packed with TATP was to blow up outside an AT&T switching center in Nashville on Christmas Day then we'll see right away that the trace stops there. While we don't have the ability to fix that directly, steps can be taken upstream to route around it.

Vince is pretty much on the money, pointing out that routes will vary according to location, ISP, network endpoint etc., and we have multiple carriers into building, the blend of which changes periodically too. This in itself makes the trace quite handy because you will see a different result from me, or your next-door neighbor with a different ISP and we need to know what you see to work out where it might be going wrong. There is otherwise quite a bit of faulty analysis in this thread and it would likely be more constructive to paste the trace data into an associated support ticket, rather than spending time speculating about how things might work.



Peter


Professional ecommerce web hosting services
Shared hosting Windows & Linux | Dedicated servers | Domains | SSL
Ecommerce Templates specialists since 2003
https://servelink.com

Yes, well it's real convenient now that Vince mentioned the value of users looking up the routes....
But in reality, a good host who is knowledgeable in DNS routing would have asked their clients for that info instead of...

quote:

---

Hi there

Yes, we’ve had a few reports like this from others too, but so far we’ve yet to uncover any issue on our systems. This feels like some external issue. At the present your site looks OK and has been for some time, which is good but makes it more difficult to detect any problems. We are continuing to monitor.

---

Thank you for your input. As it happens we are a good host who is knowledgeable in DNS routing and did ask two people in this thread for tracert output long before Vince ever mentioned it

Peter


Professional ecommerce web hosting services
Shared hosting Windows & Linux | Dedicated servers | Domains | SSL
Ecommerce Templates specialists since 2003
https://servelink.com