HI, I have a site hosted in California by a company called Hosting4less. I am in MD.

Here's my problem. After never having a problem, I now cannot FTP into my site.

When I ping the site it times out. When I do a tracert it times out when it hops close to the host.

The web site is up and accessible. There are no problems with HTTP access whatsoever.

My host who it seems does not have much time to talk to me says that the problem is at my end, specifically that it is my provider which is Comcast on the @home service. My host says he can tracert to me and it dies close to me. He says that my tracert to them dies because of the return path, i.e it appears to die at the host end but it is actually getting there and the result is dying on the way back to me???

While my host was shouting at me down the phone, I heard someone in the background talking about a 'Known Cisco Bug'.

Any gurus out there maybe shed some light on this problem?

Thanks

You can tell routers not to pass, say, ICMP, which would result in your pings returning a timeout error.

As for your traces - it's possible, but it would have been better if he would have sent you the results of his trace so that you could compare them to yours, and see if there is a lag at a point in your trace that matches a timeout on his end. If his is just timing out at the end of your route, near your cable provider, it's unlikely there's a problem, since a lot of cable companies block toward their end, especially if they've got proxies set up.

What I'd do is pop over to http://www.traceroute.org and trace to the site from several locations. Compare these with your traces. If they show similar tendencies, you'll at least know it's not restricted to you. Also, I'd verify that the FTP process is actually running ontheir end, and make sure they're not seeing any errors. Do they offer a status page with services listed? If so, check that. Those are starting points, anyway.

In addition to the excellent advice Annette has given, have a friend on a different ISP try to FTP as well, that will help narrow down whether it is a server or a Comcast problem.

What type of error are you getting when you FTP? Can you connect and not pass traffic, or can you now even establish a connection? Depending on where the error is occurring there are different solutions.

Thanks for the replies. The problem is definitely at my end i.e. @home

I did several tracerts from www.tracert.com to my home IP and that of my gateway with similar results - time outs close to the destination. I can FTP to my web site if I use an alternative provider (xo.com)

I spoke to @home Tier 2 who (of course) have no problem with the tracert to my IP or the web site - go figure.

Basically CuteFTP can't establish a connection and just times out. This happened once before for a day or so and then was corrected.

I plan to call @home again and send them tracert results from remote sites to my IP to show the timeout. Can someone educate me on why HTTP is passed with no problem - my site is busy, 7K-8K pageviews per day with no problem. I just can't update the site from my comfy chair at home, only from work.

Thanks
Steve

I had many problems with @home and their routers, I think knock had me on speed dial...

Just to make sure its not you, try using a differnt NIC, and besure to remove any firewalls completely, as in uninstall them, and reboot to ensure they are out of memory..

During the time I was on cable, I went though 7 NIC's due to spikes, they wouldn't just die, they just wouldn't connect, or would only upload so much before dying....

We have a client who had the same problem. He can go to any other FTP site besides ours. I believe he was a cable modem user with RoadRunner. What we did to fix the problem:

* reboot the server he was hosted on
* cold booted everything on his side
* both host and end user was using Linux

It worked. :D