Talktalk and Cloudflare

[Masterfrodo13]

Yesterday I migrated my website and email to Cloudflare DNS servers. Since then I have been unable to access either my website or my emails when at home, using Talktalk. I can access them on my phone, using 4G, and I can access them both away from home on other wifi's. 

So what's going on? I have switched off the router at home for 30mins, with the hope that Talktalk would start a new ISP session, but still no luck.

My website is www.pr4photos.co.uk if anyone would like to see if they can access it on their Talktalk wifi.

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Thats great news, thanks for letting me know 

Chris

[Masterfrodo13]

It appears to be solved now. I contacted the person that deals with my website/email, and they couldn't work out why it wouldn't work for me, but it would for him, and indeed everyone that has tried on here. So in his words, he banned me from the server, and then re-enabled the IP addresses.  Which has resulted in both the website and email being now visible and usable, without the need for a VPN. The only explanation he can think of, however improbable, is that the server suspected I was spamming or attacking it in some way.

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi Masterfrodo13,

How are you getting on, are you still experiencing the same issue?

Chris

[nophead]

It might be a browser issue as the site must use some trick to get the URL because my limited understanding is the browser looks up the URL, converts it to an IP address and uses that to access the site. The web server normally using the part of the URL after the host name to decide which page to serve. In this case it uses the whole of the URL and probably gets that from a different part of the request header.

[Masterfrodo13]

How do I do that?

[nophead]

It doesn't look like a DNS problem as presumably 95.179.193.212 is the correct IP. But it looks like it is the correct IP for lots of different URLs and the server somehow gets the URL and serves different pages. I don't know why it doesn't work from your talktalk connection but it does from mine.

What do you see when you enter the URL of you website, the IP address from ping and stevensserver.com.

[Masterfrodo13]

I must admit, I don't understand any of it

[nophead]

There is something very odd going on. If I go to pr4photos.co.uk it displays what looks like your website but if I ping pr4photos.co.uk it comes back with an ip address of 95.179.193.212. If I put that in my browser I get this:

If I traceroute to pr4photos.co.uk I get this:

Tracing route to pr4photos.co.uk [95.179.193.212]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms 192.168.2.1
3 13 ms 6 ms 9 ms host-2-98-32-1.as13285.net [2.98.32.1]
4 8 ms 9 ms 16 ms ae51-ner001.irl.as13285.net [78.144.1.5]
5 16 ms 13 ms 18 ms ae51-scr101.thw.as13285.net [78.144.1.4]
6 13 ms 12 ms 13 ms vl32-br1-cer.lon3.choopa.net [195.66.226.176]
7 13 ms 12 ms 18 ms 10.69.3.70
8 12 ms 12 ms 13 ms 10.69.2.146
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms stevensserver.com [95.179.193.212]

If I put  stevensserver.com in my browser I get this:

So it seems like the server at 95.179.193.212 shows different pages depending on the url you use to access it, weird.

[Masterfrodo13]

Ping test

[Masterfrodo13]

Traceroute

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

I'm sorry to hear this. Did you manage to run a ping and trace route to the affected site? Do you also see a specific error message?

Thanks

[Masterfrodo13]

Hi Michelle

Still nothing, unless I use a VPN

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Ok thanks for trying this. Whilst DNS changes are usually quite quick would it be possible to give this another 24hrs to see if this updates. If there is still no change then could you run a wired ping and traceroute to the affected site please.

Thanks

[Masterfrodo13]

Hi Michelle

I powered the router down for 8hrs, and have just switched it back on. Unfortunately the result is the same. I cannot access my website, or my emails. However, if I switch on the VPN, I can access both. I am out for the day, so will leave the router on, so you can do what you need to do. And I will switch my computer off, so nothing will be trying to access either my website or email from this ISP

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

I'd recommend powering down the router for a full 30 minutes as this will reset the current session. How are you getting on?

Thanks

[Masterfrodo13]

As a workaround for this evening, I have downloaded and installed a free VPN. The free version only works on one device, which is fine, as it's the mac I need working this evening. And it works. Website works, and emails work.

Am I right in thinking that Talktalk will refresh/flush it's DNS automatically? I will switch off my router and leave it switched off tonight anyway. And if it works tomorrow without the VPN, great

[ferguson]

See above.

[Masterfrodo13]

I wouldn't know how to. And surely that wouldn't be necessary

[ferguson]

Sorry, forgot to add the link to the help article:

https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Articles/Using-3rd-Party-DNS/ta-p/2205279

[ferguson]

Have you tried changing the router DNS settings to Cloudflare?