Microsoft websites are inaccessible

I've never had a problem until the past 2-3 months when out of the blue I can not get well formed pages to load at msdn2.microsoft.com nor can I get past a page that loads a registration page for downloading Microsoft software. I have no problem on any other websites anywhere from any domain.

I've heard all kinds of assumptions suggesting local cache problems to my firewall. While I went through all the paces such assumptions seem bogus to me as the failures are consistent and unique to requests for pages from a specific subdomain (msdn2.microsoft.com) and a specific page elsewhere at microsoft.com (URL of page too long to post) and nowhere else. When did my firewall learn to discriminate?

A helpful guy finally responded stating he and others resolves similar problems by disabling dynamic DNS on the firewall (Netgear FVS318 ProSafe VPN) but the Road Runner ISP requires dynamic DNS to be selected on the router. Running ipconfig /all shows the same unroutable 192.168 IP Address being used noting I provided that 192.168 specific non-routable IP Address elsewhere in the router's configuration.

These failures to reach the noted web resources have been replicated on a friend's machine who has a different ISP. I have nowhere to turn and do not accept how my machines on my LAN and my firewall can be the problem.

Can anybody else confirm problems accessing pages at msdn2.microsoft.com? Its where the ASP.NET documentation is. If you care to try to do a Google search such as the following and then try to load several page(s) from msdn2 using the search results...

The request for a page can and will take up to 4 minutes and if a page is returned it will be all mangled.

//Google search... c# site:msdn2.microsoft.com

What the f8ck?

Reply to
clintonG
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I am sitting in a hotel room with an 800 mhz laptop running XP Pro, BlackIce and IPsec, IPsec as a packet filter to supplement BI, and using a dial up. I have no problems accessing the msdn2 link for C# and the pages are well formed.

Sometimes, you can fix a problem by doing a hard reset and power down on the router.

The other thing you can do is flash the router again with the current or later version of the firmware, as firmware can become kind of sick running on the router.

BTW, I am a .NET programmer too and I'll keep that link. ;-)

formatting link

Reply to
Death8

Thanks for your comments. I tried powering down and up on the router. Next test is cabling directly to the cable modem. Still, do you have any comments why it would be just Microsoft's msdn2 subdomain and no other websites?

Reply to
clintonG

You might want to take a computer and directly connect it to the modem, make sure you got some kind personal FW running. You can test that way.

If you don't have a problem, then you know it's with the router. If it's the router, then flash it with a firmware -- reinstall.

Reply to
Death9

If your router has an LAN IP and you are not using DHCP on the LAN side and you have a "192.168 specific non-routable IP Address elsewhere in the router's configuration" means your workstation has could have a static IP assigned if it doesn't do so, assign it a 192.168 IP. Change your DNS servers from your ISP's to someone elses and see if the situation is resolved, that will rule out DNS if the condition still exists. You can get public dns servers woth a google search,

formatting link
is one place. I use 4.2.2.1-.3 which is level 3's DNS servers, they seem to work great here..

Cliff

Reply to
Cliff

clintonG wrote on Tue, 2 Jan 2007 13:47:49 -0600:

Try disabling the DNS proxy if the router has one - I have a DG834 and had problems occassionally with certain hosts caused by the router DNS proxy falling apart, by disabling it the DNS server addresses from your ISP will be passed to your PC via DHCP and your PC will makes requests from them directly, rather than proxying requests through the router. It could be that the DNS responses for these hosts can't be handled correctly by the router DNS proxy, so it appears that a connection cannot be made.

Dan

Reply to
Spack

Huh? He should make sure that he has *not* any kind of packet filter running which could f*ck up the connection, which is most likely already the case.

Reply to
Sebastian Gottschalk

Well gentlemen, something f*cked up the firewall as I cabled directly from the cable modem to bypass the router and all was well. Then minutes ago I recabled the router back to the cable modem, determined access to msdn2.microsoft.com was still FUBAR, reset the router to factory settings, upgraded the firmware and poof! I can now access msdn2 without any problems and get a well-formed page in the response.

This was a long trek which would have been much more miserable if not for the sage advice of you fellas and the tip about this issue from an ASP.NET development peer. Thank you one and all...

Reply to
clintonG

Oops, it looks like you leaped and there was no water in pool and you went *SPLAT*.

I want to know what kind of knowledge do you really have in computers.

What kind of practical trouble shooting and solution skills do you have?

Maybe, in your world, the XP FW fixes all problems, NOT, or in software packet filter world!

I come from a varied and very long career in computers and have worn many different hats along the way, and it started about the time Apple was in a wooden box, young whipper snapper.

As you can see by the OP's post, that the router is the problem.

You can pick yourself up, clean yourself off and go stand in Death's play pen.

Death

Reply to
Death9

Logic conclusion. As nothing more is needed here. If the network has a serious problem, you should remove all potential troublemakers including packet filters. After all, why should he add one? Especially why should he add a broken and vulnerable one? You're not even giving any reason for this totally superfluos, irrational and irresponsible advice.

Windows Firewall also is a packet filter. What did I write above?

Reply to
Sebastian Gottschalk

And like you're some kind of expert here and you got your finger on the pulse on anything, which you don't have it. You put your draws on one leg at a time. I would suspect the OP was already running a PFW in the first place, as most will tend to do that behind a router.

I don't even know where you get off, who, or what you think you are, which you're not that. You can't see past black or gray, can you.

What did you write above there? I would say more off the wall babble that didn't apply to the OP's final solution, and your obsession with packet filters.

At least I gave a solution, and in the meantime, you leaped out there, and there was no water in the pool for you. That's all I saw Superman Security.

I don't care if it's the XP FW/packet filter, any personal FW/packet filter, period or your mom's cook book.

My message to the OP was *do not connect that computer to the modem and directly to the Internet without some kind of protect, if you're taking the machine from behind the router to test the Web page, which if had any sense, which I think he did, he didn't do it without some protection.

Man, no one is listening to you other than yourself, particularly not me on this. You didn't provide a solution for the OP and you needed to start psycho babbling once again, when you got caught with your Pamper down.

You couldn't help a fly find a garbage truck in 95 degree weather.

Let me give you your bottle and I'll change your Pamper, so you'll settle down in Death's play pen.

You need to stop posting, that's the bottom line, you need to stop posting.

Death

Reply to
Death9

And you don't consider that a serious problem?

Wrong. The initial advise was to bypass to router and connect directly to the modem, therefore eliminating the router as the potential cause of the problem.

In the same breath, you then advised him to put a packet filter, thus an additional potential cause of problem in the way again.

Sorry, but that's totally stupid.

As you may or may not understand, Windows Firewall as a packet filter is a packet filter as well, so the same thing applies.

After all, I never advised him to use Windows Firewall at all, neither do I generally. I think people are usually way better off without a non-understood and usually superfluos security measure. The only think I'd say is that if someone wants to use a host-based packet filter, Windows Firewall is a good choice, and a million times better than any of those broken PFWs.

"in the meantime" doesn't exist. Usenet is asynchronous.

No, this was not your message. Your message was to not connect without using a PFW. If you had the technical competence you claim, then you'd know that there is no relation between a PFW and protection, and neither would it have any use at all in such a scenario.

Nah, I just need to add you to where you belong.

Reply to
Sebastian Gottschalk

Sebastian Gottschalk wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.dfncis.de:

Superfluos- Insane, mindless babble. Most common word found in the Sebastian Gotch-lick dictionary. Generously repeated in almost every post, and always spelled incorrectly. Likely means...

su·per·flu·ous Function: adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Latin superfluus, literally, running over, from superfluere to overflow, from super- + fluere to flow -- more at FLUID

1 a : exceeding what is sufficient or necessary : EXTRA b : not needed : UNNECESSARY as in Sebastian Gotch-lick's posts. 2 obsolete : marked by wastefulness : EXTRAVAGANT

- su·per·flu·ous·ly adverb

- su·per·flu·ous·ness noun

Everybody hates the grammar cops, but if you are going to use important sounding words to belittle people, then at least get them right. Hopefully your grasp of security is better than that of the language. Judging from your posts though, I don't believe it is.

Reply to
Dontbother

Death

Reply to
Death10

Well hello again fellas. As it turns out everybody is full of sh!t so why the nitpicking? Who the f*ck really cares?

We have too many real enemies to worry about anyway such as democrats, republicans, fascists and the global police state they and the jews are trying to shove up everybody's @ss. Is it worth arguing amongst ourselves? Nope. Well sometimes ;-)

So check this out... I'm 54 and have 25 years of expereince with computing. Not enough in networking but I got the fundamentals and like most of us with other deep experience I don't know sh!t from shinola about the vagaries of packet inspection or any other anomaly unique to TCP/IP networking. I know and understand the principles which is why I've used one and only one hardware device for a firewall that does in fact provide stateful packet inspection as well as other nicities in firmware. Nothing behind the router on this machine except for McAffee and the Windows Defender.

=============================================== And then oops! I observer the Windows Firewall is in fact enabled. Let's talk about this... as the problems I've experienced could be an imposed conflict because two cat fighting bitches are fighting to control the network. ===============================================

The router is a first generation Netgear FVS318 ProSafe VPN Firewall. I blasted the old configuration and upgraded the firmware to the latest 2.4 release. Last night when I replied to say thanks I was happy because all seemed well and stable and remained so last night for a couple of hours until my eyes stung so bad I had to go to my room and fall asleep. This morning I get to the machine I work at and begin reading some documentation at msdn2. All is well for about five minutes. I'm reading webpages and then balooeey!

The f*cking router starts flashing like a christmas tree blinking all over the place as if the other three enabled machines on my LAN were all actively requesting services which they were not. Turned on yes, being used by anybody no.

All requested pages on the browser returned blank. I couldn't even login to the router it became so unstable. Sometimes the router would then allow me to login and see diagnostic pages, sometimes those pages were malformed and others would not display at all. I'm starting to get the feeling the device has decided it wants to commit suicide.

I went through the typical and recabled directly to the cable modem to determine access to the Internet was stable. All okay. Cabled back to the router and rebooted the router, rebooted the cable modem and rebooted the machine. Nothing changed. Loss of all http and all access to mail and the web and worse no access to other machines in the LAN.

So I whacked the router back to its default config again and allowed its wizard to reconfigure the router. I have to get Internet access dynamically from the Road Runner ISP so why fool around with a manual config? I have all previous settings on paper just in case.

All is stable once again and has been for the past houir. It was interesting to observe the router did not revert back to its OOTB configuration to use the original 1.4 firmware but reapplied the 2.4 firmware without my intervention.

Reply to
clintonG

As I suspected.

That XP packet filter has nothing to do with your problem.

Think about it and what's happening above, as to the possible problem could be.

Wait a minute here, you got 25 in the (bus) and lived 54 on the Earth. Do you think you, your career the router or modem will last forever?

You might want to think about getting a new router.

I hope you have a UPS protecting your equipment such as a router for long longevity, as they will go defective with bad power, such as spikes on the line from other house hold appliances switching on and off, brownouts, instead of it plugged into a surge protector laying on the floor. A UPS/AVR will keep the power clean a constant.

I have had to replace the router and the modem as either one will start going defective in the long run, like things will go out on you, at age 54.

Death

Reply to
Death10

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