Why can't I hit the DoubleClick domains?

September 25, 2006 10:33 AM

Why can no one in my office hit any of DoubleClick's servers?

Normally I wouldn't complain, because it means we aren't seeing any of the ads that DoubleClick serves across the web, but it also means we can't see the ads on our own sites.

I've eliminated internal factors -- what could be causing this?

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

Can you provide a little more information as to what you have tried to confirm it is internal?

What do you mean by "hit" their servers? Most servers are physically secured in a datacenter, so it would be hard to hit them. I find that I have issues at home frequently with Adelphia's DNS servers not resolving DC ip's.

Does this work: http://65.205.8.182/ad/N1841.OSTG/B1764282.41;sz=120x600
posted by SirStan at 10:36 AM on September 25, 2006

Response by poster: I confirmed that our IT guy isn't filtering out DoubleClick for any reason. That's all I did, actually.

When I say hit, I mean browse or ping. I cannot connect to their servers via the usual public methods.

I can't open that address you provided.

Thanks for any thoughts.
posted by crickets at 11:02 AM on September 25, 2006

Theres lots of things it could be. It could be a hardware appliance, or the way your workstations are configured, or even filtering on your proxy.

It's probably something your IT guy doesn't know about, or have you tried asking him (re: the problem, not doubleclick filter)? (Isn't that what he's hired for?)
posted by mphuie at 11:11 AM on September 25, 2006

Response by poster: I asked him about the domain in general, not specifically filtering.

Are there any troubleshooting tips you can give me to eliminate more possibilities? We're an all-Mac shop, with only one, part-time IT guy.

It's not the end of the world, but it's frustrating.
posted by crickets at 11:16 AM on September 25, 2006

Some ISP's filter out ping, so you need to be careful with this.. but try tracert'ing to 65.205.8.182. Yours will look different than mine:

Tracing route to uuvaadvip4.doubleclick.net [65.205.8.182]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 2 ms 1 ms myrouterip
2 8 ms 9 ms 5 ms myrouterip
3 9 ms 8 ms 8 ms myrouterip
4 21 ms 18 ms 22 ms myisp.com [1.1.1.1]

5 15 ms 13 ms 13 ms myisp.com [1.1.1.2]
6 20 ms 14 ms 32 ms myisp.com [1.1.1.3]
7 16 ms 15 ms 39 ms POS4-1.GW8.BOS4.ALTER.NET [157.130.0.93]
8 16 ms 15 ms 16 ms 0.so-4-3-0.xl2.bos4.alter.net [152.63.17.18]
9 30 ms 28 ms 28 ms 0.so-4-3-0.xl2.dca8.alter.net [152.63.144.30]
10 31 ms 30 ms 30 ms 0.so-7-0-0.wr2.iad6.alter.net [152.63.37.114]
11 97 ms 42 ms 29 ms so-1-0-0.ur2.iad6.web.wcom.net [157.130.59.82]
12 31 ms 30 ms 30 ms 206.112.64.38
13 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms 206.112.70.49
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 41 ms 30 ms 29 ms uuvaadvip4.doubleclick.net [65.205.8.182]
posted by SirStan at 11:46 AM on September 25, 2006

Response by poster: This is what mine looks like:

1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 14.227 ms 2.555 ms 2.854 ms
2 8.11.253.117 (8.11.253.117) 14.959 ms 23.733 ms 28.016 ms
3 se-5-0-3.hsa3.newyork1.level3.net (4.78.182.21) 20.776 ms 19.345 ms 15.613 ms


4 ae-23-54.car3.newyork1.level3.net (4.68.97.114) 195.129 ms 55.566 ms 54.918 ms
5 ggr2-p360.n54ny.ip.att.net (192.205.33.93) 56.834 ms att-level3-oc192.newyork1.level3.net (4.68.127.150) 39.613 ms ggr2-p360.n54ny.ip.att.net (192.205.33.93) 5.931 ms
6 tbr2-p033901.n54ny.ip.att.net (12.123.0.94) 14.223 ms 14.360 ms 13.913 ms
7 tbr2-cl15.wswdc.ip.att.net (12.122.10.54) 17.563 ms 48.546 ms 47.358 ms
8 gbr2-p20.wswdc.ip.att.net (12.122.11.182) 48.528 ms 61.238 ms 72.860 ms
9 12.123.9.133 (12.123.9.133) 66.819 ms 46.808 ms 50.970 ms
10 12.118.28.22 (12.118.28.22) 53.760 ms 48.729 ms 37.900 ms
11 65.205.8.182 (65.205.8.182) 31.377 ms 70.518 ms 62.184 ms

It looks like it made it successfully -- what does that mean?
posted by crickets at 2:23 PM on September 25, 2006

Are you trying to view the sites all in the same browser? Switch to another browser. Other than that, call their support and tell them no one can see the ads in house.
posted by Divine_Wino at 2:41 PM on September 25, 2006

It's some kind of adblocking gone awry.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 3:36 PM on September 25, 2006

They also may be blocking on the the application level. If you can trace to it but the webserver isnt giving you any data then they may be blocking you for some reason (click abuse, DDOS zombie, etc).

I would check to see if youre on a proxy (or invisible web proxy) and see if the administrators of that proxy are blocking ads for any reason. The proxy's DNS/filter settings come first and are transparent. I second trying a different browser.
posted by damn dirty ape at 4:15 PM on September 25, 2006

Response by poster: FWIW -- the blok was at the ISP level. According to my IT guy:

"Their website had been blacklisted by some dns providers due to denial of service attacks."
posted by crickets at 3:51 PM on September 26, 2006