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Redstation - Down ?




Posted by Kakashi, 05-31-2012, 11:03 AM
Our Servers with them just lost connectivity. Furthermore their website isn't working for me.

http://www.redstation.com

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/redstation.com

Shows it's down too.

Posted by Kakashi, 05-31-2012, 11:06 AM
Just called them and got a confirmation their London Network is down.

Posted by F-DNS, 05-31-2012, 11:13 AM
Ours went down, came back for a minute or so, then down again.

Also Evorack who have VPS nodes there seem down.

I'm watching Evorack's Twitter because Johnny there is usually pretty quick at getting the word out.

Posted by F-DNS, 05-31-2012, 11:17 AM
We're back up

Posted by Kakashi, 05-31-2012, 11:22 AM
We aren't at the moment, niether is their website.

Edit : Website is back up. Hopefully our stuff will be too soon.

Edit: Ok we are back online too, a bit of packet loss though.

Posted by Simplex-Ed, 05-31-2012, 11:29 AM
Major LINX network problems.

Posted by Martin-D, 05-31-2012, 11:32 AM
Yeah, problems with Linx

Removed URL - wrong one!

Posted by Flapadar, 05-31-2012, 11:38 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simplex-Ed
Major LINX network problems.
That explains why my flat connection to most of Europe dropped out for ~20 minutes.

Posted by Simplex-Ed, 05-31-2012, 11:40 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flapadar
That explains why my flat connection to most of Europe dropped out for ~20 minutes.
Indeed, traffic has dropped.

https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/linx

Posted by evorack, 05-31-2012, 01:42 PM
The great thing about Redstation is that they have peering in multiple Internet Exchanges (IXs) around the UK. When LINX causes problems, their network can re-route itself (maybe with a little help from the techs) via another IX.

I know the guys personally there and building a resilient network is really their passion

Disclosure: Indeed, Evorack does have infrastructure located at Redstation

Cheers

Jonny

Posted by Flapadar, 05-31-2012, 01:43 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by evorack
The great thing about Redstation is that they having peering in multiple Internet Exchanges (IXs) around the UK. When LINX causes problems, their network can re-route itself (maybe with a little help from the techs) via another IX.

I know the guys personally there and building a resilient network is really their passion
Problem being that most traffic from the EU will go to LINX before the other IX's, lol.

A good idea though, shame the UK's infrastructure is pretty bad.

Posted by evorack, 05-31-2012, 01:47 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flapadar
Problem being that most traffic from the EU will go to LINX before the other IX's, lol.

A good idea though, shame the UK's infrastructure is pretty bad.
What makes you think that the UK's infrastructure is pretty bad? There are many IXs with large dark fibre between them in the UK. I agree with your statement that EU traffic tends to go via LINX, however that is the choice of the individual ISPs that don't bother peering with other exchanges.

Regarding Redstation though, they do have peering with AMS-IX, so I assume that they still have an additional route to EU ISPs that peer at AMS-IX (Amsterdam)...

Edit:

Indeed, my assumptions seem to be correct, as if I traceroute to hetzner from our Redstation kit, is does appear to go via AMS-IX (in bold):

Code:
 2  113-19-200-109.gosport.uk.abpni.net (109.200.19.113)  3.597 ms  3.963 ms  4.171 ms
 3  245-16-200-109.rackcentre.redstation.net.uk (109.200.16.245)  0.581 ms  0.536 ms  0.514 ms
 4  101-16-200-109.rackcentre.redstation.net.uk (109.200.16.101)  4.230 ms  4.227 ms  4.216 ms
 5  r1ams1.core.init7.net (195.69.144.210)  11.635 ms  11.623 ms  11.704 ms
 6  r1fra1.core.init7.net (77.109.128.153)  20.570 ms  20.299 ms  20.291 ms
 7  gw-hetzner.init7.net (77.109.135.18)  18.514 ms gw-hetzner.init7.net (82.197.166.86)  18.170 ms gw-hetzner.init7.net (77.109.135.18)  18.237 ms
 8  hos-bb2.juniper3.rz12.hetzner.de (213.239.240.132)  23.369 ms hos-bb1.juniper3.rz10.hetzner.de (213.239.240.225)  47.238 ms hos-bb1.juniper3.rz12.hetzner.de (213.239.240.250)  22.978 ms
 9  hos-tr2.ms-ex3k1.rz11.hetzner.de (213.239.236.83)  26.190 ms hos-tr4.ms-ex3k1.rz11.hetzner.de (213.239.236.115)  25.426 ms  25.392 ms

Posted by Flapadar, 05-31-2012, 01:51 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by evorack
What makes you think that the UK's infrastructure is pretty bad? There are many IXs with large dark fibre between them in the UK. I agree with your statement that EU traffic tends to go via LINX, however that is the choice of the individual ISPs so not both peering with other exchanges.

Regarding Redstation though, they do have peering with AM-IX, so I assume that they still have an additional route to EU ISPs that peering at AM-IX...
Almost all traffic routes via London in the UK. For example, I live a 15 minute walk away from the Internet for Business datacenter in Aberdeen. However, traffic to it routes into London and then back to Aberdeen ( a bit pointless )

Manchester does seem to be another 'turning point' for some traffic, though that's quite a rare case.

Code:
Tracing route to ifb3.web.ifb.net [194.105.165.170]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
  2    22 ms    22 ms    21 ms  xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
  3    24 ms    22 ms    21 ms  Ten1-1.csw1.ixn.as42689.net [77.244.129.90]
  4    24 ms    21 ms    21 ms  Ten1-2.csw0.thdo.as42689.net [77.244.129.94]
  5    22 ms    21 ms    21 ms  Ten2-1.br0.thdo.as42689.net [77.244.129.86]
  6    21 ms    22 ms    22 ms  ge0-2-3.rtr-02.core.ldn0.ifb.net [195.66.236.206
]
  7    24 ms    21 ms    22 ms  ge0-0-2.rtr-01.core.ldn0.ifb.net [194.105.167.12
6]
  8    45 ms    44 ms    44 ms  ge0-0-3.rtr-01.core.abz0.ifb.net [194.105.167.16
6]

Posted by evorack, 05-31-2012, 01:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flapadar
Almost all traffic routes via London in the UK.
Yes, but that's not a bad thing in terms of distance, as the UK is quite a small country compared to some others. While we may think of Aberdeen <-> London as a great distance, some other countries would class this as the same city! (Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but you get my point). It's also not pointless to go from your office to London back to Aberdeen, as it would be impractical to directly connect every city in the UK with each other (That's what IXs are for)

ISPs should really do what Redstation do and do some peering in the many other IXs available in the UK. Then, any LINX issues would only affect them for as long as BGP takes to change announcements. No excuse for just using LINX

Posted by Kakashi, 05-31-2012, 02:05 PM
Credit to Redstation for the fact they were immediately able to provide support and reroute their traffic quickly. Shame they haven't sent out updates to their customers about what happened, which is what I was told on the phone would happen.

"We will keep our customers in London updated." is what I was told, but haven't heard anything from them. Admittedly I didn't open a support ticket but then again I couldn't since their site was down.

Posted by evorack, 05-31-2012, 02:08 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kakashi
Shame they haven't sent out updates to their customers about what happened
I think you'd be surprised if you knew how often BGP routes have to change on a regular basis due to network blips; with the Internet being such a large place, it is only normal for this to happen. We only tend to notice LINX more as it's where most of the UKs international traffic goes through. I don't think an email to customers is warranted in every case.

Posted by Kakashi, 05-31-2012, 03:54 PM
I agree, but downtime for about 30-45 mins + their main website/control panel being offline I think warranted something . In any case I am not overly fussed about it, it's just that if they said they would send updates, they should

Posted by F-DNS, 05-31-2012, 04:17 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by evorack
Indeed, my assumptions seem to be correct, as if I traceroute to hetzner from our Redstation kit, is does appear to go via AMS-IX (in bold):
No disrespect Jonny (and sorry for spelling your name wrong earlier ) but that trace you posted most likely goes through London even though whichever router it goes through is blocked from the tracert. When RS showed as down that included from our monitors in Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

LiNode and several other providers in/around London also had problems. Let's just hope this isn't an indication of what might happen on 11th June when LINX assign new IPs to most of the connections they handle

Posted by evorack, 06-01-2012, 04:52 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by F-DNS
No disrespect Jonny (and sorry for spelling your name wrong earlier ) but that trace you posted most likely goes through London even though whichever router it goes through is blocked from the tracert.
Yes, that traceroute does probably go through London, but not via LINX. There would be no point in AMS-IX using LINX for their UK backhaul.



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