Are you able to TRACERT ???

threegee

threegee

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For almost 4 years I have been asking Vodacom why I cannot traceroute in their network and to this day have never ever received a proper response regarding this.

All I ever get with tracert's is the following:

Tracing route to x.x.x.x [x.x.x.x]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * 130 ms 10.113.115.2
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 100 ms 139 ms 99 ms x.x.x.x[x.x.x.x]

All critical information for diagnosing faults is permanently hidden and I have to ask what is so secret that Vodacom has to hide? Perhaps this problem is only applicable to the network segment I fall into which is why I would like to know back from users elsewhere in SA if they can tracert and get proper information back. Vodacom is the only network I have ever been on that does this.

Appreciate any input into this.

For those of you who do not know what a tracert (trace route) is:

- Open a command prompt : START > RUN > CMD
- type: tracert saix.net
- push enter and you will get your tracert results
 
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Unfortunately some ISPs do block traceroutes. If you have a *nix system you can use a tool like tcptraceroute to get past that.
 
They are hiding all the packet sniffers that are storing all your data and then digging through your data

puts on foiltinhat
 
remybfg10k said:
They are hiding all the packet sniffers that are storing all your data and then digging through your data

puts on foiltinhat
Click to expand...

Yes, something I suspect, probably also a reason that Vodacom now intends blocking port 25 so they can sniff through my mail too. But it is illegal to monitor your communications "without" a court order. That's what the legislation said the last time I read it anyway.
 
PS - my reason for this post remains simply to get an explanation from Vodacom as to why tracert is blocked, an explanation I've never received in over 5 years now. Every time there is a problem it is impossible to do a simple tracert and find where things are going wrong. This inability cost me another 7 hours tracing down a problem today and the day is almost over with practically no work done that I had to do.
 
threegee said:
PS - my reason for this post remains simply to get an explanation from Vodacom as to why tracert is blocked, an explanation I've never received in over 5 years now. Every time there is a problem it is impossible to do a simple tracert and find where things are going wrong. This inability cost me another 7 hours tracing down a problem today and the day is almost over with practically no work done that I had to do.
Click to expand...
[searchforum]Vodacom +tracert[/searchforum]
 
Thanks IC ...... I did read that post before I started this but that post does not actually explain "why" .... I am on the unrestricted APN which should be "unrestricted".
 
Have done that before, never got a clear answer, Have asked multiple Vodacom engineers over the years, never a clear explanation on this.
 
threegee said:
Have done that before, never got a clear answer, Have asked multiple Vodacom engineers over the years, never a clear explanation on this.
Click to expand...

Sorry, Mitch. Was so busy with your SMTP thread yesterday that I kept on wanting to pop in here and answer but never got around to it. :(

I was also under the impression I answered this before but if not:

ICMP is widely used to scan for potential victims to attack, so most networks will block ICMP on their networks, including Vodacom. It's very popular to trigger DoS attacks, for example.

Secondly, because it's a 'management protocol', it is normally at the lowest possible priority in any case.
 
Thanks Jannie, ok got it.

The only reason I keep asking is, as a user on your network, when problems crop up which as you know they do, I could quite easily run a trace and be able to tell you or one of the other engineers that hop "X" is causing timeouts and perhaps things could be traced quicker but if ICMP is blocked then that is off the cards.

It's a pity, like with anything in life, that a small group of people mess it up for everyone else and have forced networks to take away such basic functionality that many of us who've been in the game for 20+ years are so used to, but nou ja :)

As for the SMTP, it's running OK, have not had a problem all day, thanks very much for getting that sorted, actually seems to be sending mail out a lot faster than normal.
 
threegee said:
Thanks Jannie, ok got it.

The only reason I keep asking is, as a user on your network, when problems crop up which as you know they do, I could quite easily run a trace and be able to tell you or one of the other engineers that hop "X" is causing timeouts and perhaps things could be traced quicker but if ICMP is blocked then that is off the cards.

It's a pity, like with anything in life, that a small group of people mess it up for everyone else and have forced networks to take away such basic functionality that many of us who've been in the game for 20+ years are so used to, but nou ja :)

As for the SMTP, it's running OK, have not had a problem all day, thanks very much for getting that sorted, actually seems to be sending mail out a lot faster than normal.
Click to expand...
tcptraceroute:
A traceroute implementation using TCP packets
The more traditional traceroute(8) sends out either UDP or ICMP ECHO
packets with a TTL of one, and increments the TTL until the destination
has been reached. By printing the gateways that generate ICMP time
exceeded messages along the way, it is able to determine the path packets
are taking to reach the destination.

The problem is that with the widespread use of firewalls on the modern
Internet, many of the packets that traceroute(8) sends out end up being
filtered, making it impossible to completely trace the path to the
destination. However, in many cases, these firewalls will permit inbound
TCP packets to specific ports that hosts sitting behind the firewall are
listening for connections on. By sending out TCP SYN packets instead of
UDP or ICMP ECHO packets, tcptraceroute is able to bypass the most common
firewall filters.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks IC, I found a Windows version of that here and am just about to try it out, will report back here if I get it working.
 
Hi ThreeGee

It's not that the ISP that blocks you from doing a trace route a trace route uses ICMP traffic to ping to each router along a path to a destination address. Vodacom does not block ICMP traffic on it's network if you ping the SMTP Server SMTP.VODACOM.CO.ZA you will get a reply. However it is once you're outside of the Vodacom network on the public network that ICMP packets are dropped. As Vodacom3G mentioned ICMP traffic is given the lowest priority and so the information you receive from pings is unreliable making Traces on the public network unreliable. Unfortunately more sophisticated troubleshooting is needed when resolving problems on the public network a tool that is often used is wireshark which captures packets sent and received on an interface. You are clearly misinformed about traces because you should know that an ISP is not hiding anything from you and if you used another ISP you would experience the same symptoms.

I hope that this is a clear enough response for you
 
Thanks Dazyboy, I've been in networking for over 20 years so I do actually know my way around network protocols.

Of course I can ping smtp.vodacom.co.za BUT I cannot tracert to it .... ICMP is enabled on smtp.vodacom.co.za but it does appear to be disabled on all the other HOPS (11 of them) along the route.

IF I knew the IP of just one of those hidden hops, then I could answer that for sure.

However ..... when I tracert to an external IP (outside of Vodacom's control) I get all hops hidden except the starting and terminating IP's. What is clearly wrong about that is that there are several hops outside of Vodacom's network that DO respond with ICMP, I know this for a fact because I have run tracert's perfectly from "other" networks and have pinged each of those IP's revealed in the tracert from my 3G connection perfectly. By all means Vodacom should be able to hide their internal structure, which they do, but once it reaches an external IP it should display the rest of the route. So why if all those IP's respond with ICMP is it then being blocked only when I tracert???? Something simply does not gel.

However it is once you're outside of the Vodacom network on the public network that ICMP packets are dropped.
Click to expand...

Happening both internally and externally that packets are dropped.
 
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