Unable to connect to any Apple-hosted "cloud services" over CISP

[radicool]

Hi CISP

For a week or two or three now (difficult to remember when it started), I have not been able to connect to almost all "cloud" functionality offered by Apple when connecting over my CISP connection (with Vuma/Fiberhood as my provider).

This includes App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV. I can't see any content in the apps and/or I can't list my previously purchased apps and/or I can't download apps etc.

The reason I say "and/or" is because it can be slightly intermittent, one of the screens may load occasionally. Once it's loaded, then that screen will work for a while. So it almost seemed like a DNS issue, but I don't believe that is the case because I have tried with both your gateway DNS and a third-party DNS provider, and it made no difference.

Also..

• The same problem affects my Macbook, my iPhones, my Apple TVs, every single device I have on Wifi.
• But if I move any device to use a 4G Wifi connection, then it instantly works.
• If I connect using a VPN over CISP, everything works then too.
• If the content loads (by using 4G or VPN), and then I move back to CISP, that content continues to load successfully immediately thereafter, but not if I close and reopen the application.

So it really does feel like a problem at CISP/related to my fiber.

I called the call center and understandably their response was "send a ping and a traceroute of the problem domain"... But I'm not loading a web page, so it's very difficult for an amateur like me to make sense of the sequence of events that are occurring when loading one of the native Apple services.

Here is a snapshot from Little Snitch of the 10 hostnames and 21 IPs that are connected to when loading Apple's "TV.app". As you can see, Little Snitch confirms all 90 connections were allowed... and yet nothing will load in the app until I change my ISP.



I took two packet captures using Little Snitch, one connected to CISP where the content would not load, and another on CellC 4G, where the content loads.

• You can see on CISP, it tries for about 5 seconds, which seems to fail and then does nothing until it tries again at 40 seconds, etc.
• On CellC, it loads all the content to completion without any interruption

If I try compare the packet captures, I can't make out what is going wrong over the CISP connection that results in it giving up. Can you please assist, or perhaps someone has an idea of something else I can try in order to figure this out!

Thanks in advance!

 

[swakop_toe]

Poke @PBCool and also paste your CISP support ticket reference number.
Also, which link provider do you use?
It helps that you follow their/CISP's official procedures too.

No, I cannot diagnose not solve your problem, I am a CISP on FrogFoot consumer.

 

[PBCool]

Which router are you using? This is typically an MTU issue.

 

[radicool]

Poke @PBCool and also paste your CISP support ticket reference number.

Thanks for the pointer. They didn't even give me a reference, just told me to send my pings and traceroutes, goodbye.

Also, which link provider do you use?

Link provider? As in Vumatel (Aerial installation, Constantia Kloof). Or do you mean something else?

It helps that you follow their/CISP's official procedures too.

I didn't come across any official procedures. If they're diagnostic procedures, like restarting your router, all of that is done.

Which router are you using? This is typically an MTU issue.

Netgear R7800. MTU is 1492. No settings have recently changed. Worth pointing out that I've had perfect connection for years now, everything else works perfectly, and diagnostic pings to google.com are under 4ms with 0% packet loss.

 

[PBCool]

Thanks for the pointer. They didn't even give me a reference, just told me to send my pings and traceroutes, goodbye.


Link provider? As in Vumatel (Aerial installation, Constantia Kloof). Or do you mean something else?


I didn't come across any official procedures. If they're diagnostic procedures, like restarting your router, all of that is done.


Netgear R7800. MTU is 1492. No settings have recently changed. Worth pointing out that I've had perfect connection for years now, everything else works perfectly, and diagnostic pings to google.com are under 4ms with 0% packet loss.

Try bypassing the router and testing, easiest thing to narrow down what the issue may be.

 

[supersunbird]

I called the call center and understandably their response was "send a ping and a traceroute of the problem domain"... But I'm not loading a web page, so it's very difficult for an amateur like me to make sense of the sequence of events that are occurring when loading one of the native Apple services.

I hate that network guys can't understand this bit at times, if installing 0365 from portal.office.com is super slow on one connection and fast on others, me pinging and tracerouting portal.office.com is not gonna help at all since portal.office.com itself is working fine, the software installer is not pulling data for the portal.office.com (and there is not some magic button I can click to see where the data requests are going) and the network guy will need to do some real work and replicate the problem and whatnot and investigate.

 

[Rickster]

I hate that network guys can't understand this bit at times, if installing 0365 from portal.office.com is super slow on one connection and fast on others, me pinging and tracerouting portal.office.com is not gonna help at all since portal.office.com itself is working fine, the software installer is not pulling data for the portal.office.com (and there is not some magic button I can click to see where the data requests are going) and the network guy will need to do some real work and replicate the problem and whatnot and investigate.

Windows-> Resource monitor -> network -> Sorted.

 

[supersunbird]

Windows-> Resource monitor -> network -> Sorted.

You see, wonder why the networking guys don't know about this then (I didn't, only CPU, Memory and Disk, cause I've never had to look around there for anything, or had such an issue until this O365 one)...

 

[PBCool]

I hate that network guys can't understand this bit at times, if installing 0365 from portal.office.com is super slow on one connection and fast on others, me pinging and tracerouting portal.office.com is not gonna help at all since portal.office.com itself is working fine, the software installer is not pulling data for the portal.office.com (and there is not some magic button I can click to see where the data requests are going) and the network guy will need to do some real work and replicate the problem and whatnot and investigate.

This is something that has happened with Microsoft for ages, there is no real technical explanation. We hand and receive this traffic from Microsoft locally, beyond that they manage the session.