Why won't my domain work (when all others do)?

February 8, 2021 11:21 AM

Most attempts to reach my dreamhost-hosted domain time out. I am not experiencing any other issues with other domains, even others hosted on dreamhost. What's going on? How can I fix it?

My own domain (and a bunch of subdomains) have been mostly inaccessible for a couple of weeks. My browser gives the following error: "ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT." Tracert to the domain and to the server don't seem to show issues. When I turn on a VPN, the problems disappear and I can access everything. No other domains, nor other domains hosted on dreamhost, have issues. But everything connected to this single domain is having issues.

I have wordpress, nextcloud, and a couple other pieces of software running on various domains. I'm using Windows 10 and having the issue on various computers on my home connection. I'm on Verizon Fios.

The websites are all functional. They work when I'm using a VPN, when I'm using my cell phone's data connection, and when I check the domains using downforeveryone.

Periodically the websites will work on my home connection for a few minutes, and then they all start timing out again.

I contacted dreamhost, but they couldn't figure it out.

What's going on? What can I try to fix it?

posted by msbrauer to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Is this just you? Can friends elsewhere hit your sites, or are they timing-out for everyone?
posted by Thorzdad at 11:27 AM on February 8, 2021

Response by poster: Only timing out on my home internet connection. No issues for anyone else.
posted by msbrauer at 11:30 AM on February 8, 2021

Do you have something in your FIOS router that's mucking with the site, e.g. parental filter or the like? Are you running anything like an adblocker or a network-wide pihole?
posted by scolbath at 11:35 AM on February 8, 2021

What OS are you using? you should try an NSLOOKUP and a TRACEROUTE from your computer both when on the VPN and when not on the VPN -- the results that come back could tell you something, if they're different or come back with an error you may be able to find out why. Who is providing the DNS for your domains, is that Dreamhost? It doesn't mean Dreamhost is at fault but there's a lot of 'hops' between your computer and the servers hosting your sites, and the 'hops' go a different route over the VPN but can't 'hop' over a step somewhere in between on the non-VPNed route.
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:44 AM on February 8, 2021

Can you use 'curl' or similar from the command line to fetch at least the HEAD of the webpage. You can traceroute evidently, can you talk HTTP to port 80/443. Can you SSH into them? When you do a 'nslookup' or ping/traceroute and tell it not to resolve the name back, is the IP address the correct one?
posted by zengargoyle at 11:45 AM on February 8, 2021

Just throwing out more ideas...

Are you using non-standard DNS on your network (e.g. Google Public DNS or OpenDNS)? Do you have Cloudflare or anything like that in front of your website? If you can host multiple domains on your dreamhost account, do those work? (I know you said other dreamhost sites work, but it wasn't clear if those are all on your account, or are other peoples' sites.) How long has this been happening?
posted by primethyme at 11:46 AM on February 8, 2021

Are any of the other people successfully viewing the site also using Verizon FIOS? If not, I think you should have another Verizon FIOS customer try it (a neighbor of nearby friend, maybe?). If they also have issues, we know that this is a Verizon issue; if it works fine for them, it implies (but does not prove) that this is an issue with just your home connection/equipment.
posted by yuwtze at 11:46 AM on February 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

There is a thread here with a solution at the end that might help.
posted by beagle at 11:58 AM on February 8, 2021

What's going on?

Reads to me as if some security-related network filter on your host has decided to ban or perhaps severely throttle traffic to/from your home's public IP address after detecting some perceived malfeasance coming from there. Perhaps it recently got attacked at some stage by somebody who used to have the same public IP address that you do now?

What can I try to fix it?

If these instructions from 2009 still work you might be able to persuade your FIOS router to cut over to a different public IP address than the one it's using at present. If not, probably worth putting yourself through the pain of talking to Verizon to find out how that's done in 2021. Or perhaps next time you'll be away from home for at least a day you could just leave the router switched off while you're gone (24 hours is a pretty common IP address lease time).
posted by flabdablet at 2:20 PM on February 8, 2021

Is tracert using v4 or v6 addresses? Is your internet browser using v4 or v6 addresses? Check with both ping and ping6 to make sure it's not a difference in behaviour between the two.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 4:17 PM on February 8, 2021 [1 favorite]