Sep 14
10:54 am
Some Network Issues Remain
Posted (September 14th, 2006 at 10:54 am PST) by DallasOur router upgrade seems to have improved performance for some of you but we are still seeing a lot of complaints of little or no improvement at all. Now that we are confident the routers are not presenting bottlenecks performance-wise we will be focusing our attention on the specific areas of the network that are still having problems. We have received a shipment of high-powered ethernet switches and will begin deploying those to problem areas in the network. We are also investigating other options to improve performance.
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September 14th, 2006 at 11:00 am
disable comments before they whine again in this one
September 14th, 2006 at 11:01 am
I am really frustrated by all these problems, and im sure you guys at dreamhost are also. Please get it resolved ASAP, i am wasting time and money. Thanks
September 14th, 2006 at 11:04 am
This makes me sad.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Granville - If you are tired of the whining, maybe you should stop reading the comments?
Whining is tiresome, sure, but so is having at least one of your websites/databases down every day and not being able to access email for days. And being told that it’s fixed. Then seeing that’s it’s not fixed. Report to customer service. Report. Wait. Repeat. This has been going on for months.
Dreamhost sure is a good deal, though!
September 14th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Further evidence that DH has no idea what they are doing.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Yeah, i understand that lots of people are complaining but what do you expect when their services are down repeatedly for a week? I respect dreamhost and dont plan on leaving but I think they should know how their customers feel. I also appreciate dreamhost keeping us informed, even if its not good news.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:10 am
Have you guys confirmed using traceroutes from customers that all of the problems are within your network?
Ever since signing up a couple of months ago I have had problems, however they seem to be due to the fact that I am on the east coast, and there is latency as the traffic goes across the country. Some of the peers introduce latency to the overall ping times. I know that this is the case in many of people that signed up with you guys at the same time I did (and are also on the east coast).
September 14th, 2006 at 11:13 am
11:11:47 up 47 days, 21:16, 6 users, load average: 314.89, 316.38, 316.93
September 14th, 2006 at 11:16 am
shit, shit, shit, dreamhost is pissed shit! I will make a chergeback!!!!!!
September 14th, 2006 at 11:17 am
3 days later, access to my webmail is still non existant.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Hey guys. I’m just hearing about all this trouble today. I guess I’m a little late in coming to the party. But based on the descriptions of the problem that I’ve read so far, I woudn’t have upgraded the switch like that. I’m not sure what model switch you are using, so I’m not sure how fast the switch fabric is, but essentially, what ever the problem was is still there, you’ve just given it more room to streatch it’s legs. I wanted to check the interface information on the server I’m hosted on, but you guys deny me access to /proc/net/dev, so no ifconfig output for me. But judging by the load average on the server and the symptoms you’ve laid out, I’m guessing that most of the load is actually due to processor interupts, and my best guess is that you’ve got a layer 2 issue. I would venture to guess that you’ve either got a broadcast storm happening, or possibly, some bad vtp / spanning tree mojo happening. I wanted to see if the machine I’m on was reporting a lot of broadcast packets (would confirm the presence of a broadcast storm). If there aren’t a lot of broadcasts being reported, though (particularly arp / layer 2 broadcasts), I would take another good look at you cabling and vlan configurations to make sure you haven’t inadvertanly created a loop that spanning tree can’t fix.
11:11:47 up 47 days, 21:16, 6 users, load average: 314.89, 316.38, 316.93
Yikes!
IF you guys hook me up with some output, I might be able to lend a hand. You guys have always been great to me, I hate to see you guys suffer through a head scratcher like this.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Guys,
I reported system wide outage three times in last 3 hours; you wait until report is verified; it gets verified because archibald machine is dreadfully slow.
Every time, after 15 - 30 mins after verification, you report “We believe the issue to be resolved.”
Can you at least check (or your robot) that this is true? Please? I need those sites.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Man, I really love DH and the people who run it. I’ve set up clinets with them and recommended them to friends and family. But good LAWD, I’m about to jump ship.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Hey, guys, don’t waste your time and money with them!
September 14th, 2006 at 11:27 am
This is bordering on insane. Dreamhost needs to issue some credits to us.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:28 am
I don’t understand the purpose of enabling these comments. To give opportunities for people to alternatively vent their futile frustration or to give virtual hugs to DH staff? Or for DH staff to be convinced that lots of people are reading this blog? Or?
September 14th, 2006 at 11:37 am
DH is doing a great job altho they have problems …really now …
September 14th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Well at least I now know I’m not the only one dealing with absolutely sh*tty service from DH lately. I’ve been having nonstop issues for OVER 2 MONTHS now with my panel not functioning anywhere close to how it should or used to, webmail not connecting and always giving me “dropped by IMAP” errors, and my main email going down for 3 full days with no explanation ever given as to why. Plus the fact that you now have to wait 2 days or more to get a response from their “support” team, and when they do respond, nothing has been fixed. Just more questions, more wait time, never being able to deal with the same support agent, etc.
I used to sing the praises of DH to anyone & everyone I knew who had a website, but their service has seriously gone straight into the sh*tter over the past few months, leaving me no choice but to start searching out other hosting provider options. It’s just too ridiculous to deal with anymore under DH.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Well at least I now know I’m not the only one dealing with absolutely sh*tty service from DH lately. I’ve been having nonstop issues for OVER 2 MONTHS now with my panel not functioning anywhere close to how it should or used to, webmail not connecting and always giving me “dropped by IMAP” errors, and my main email going down for 3 full days with no explanation ever given as to why. Plus the fact that you now have to wait 2 days or more to get a response from their “support” team, and when they do respond, nothing has been fixed. Just more questions, more wait time, never being able to deal with the same support agent, etc.
I used to sing the praises of DH to anyone & everyone I knew who had a website, but their service has seriously gone straight into the sh*tter over the past few months, leaving me no choice but to start searching out other hosting provider options. It’s just too ridiculous to deal with anymore under DH.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:47 am
caesar:~> uptime
11:41:49 up 16:52, 2 users, load average: 117.18, 75.11, 54.63
LA seems pretty high to me.
…but my site is more responsive now than it was this morning where the LA was much lower…
Perhaps DH should implement some sort of SNMP monitoring so they can find and track problem areas before their customers start complaining.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Darling Dreamhost, how I love you
With your awesome can-do crew
Your updates keep me mostly happy
But downtime sure does make me snappy.
These last few months are not so blissful
(I bet for you, they’re really stressful)
Please give me email, sites and SQL,
With all those things, you have no equal
But without, my faith grows slim…
I’m filled with doubt, my wallet’s grim.
Ignore the doubting fools who ran,
But please, please fix these, soon as can
IMAP errors cause gruesome wails,
I’m running out of fingernails.
September 14th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Tim - on the top of the status blog is a statement that posting in here will not make them work faster or get a problem resolved. I’m certain that opening up the comments wasn’t ment for the whinners to constantly make comments about how it’s down, or that they are leaving.
(not at tim)My sites have been down too. and out of the 20 or so sites we’ve gotten up on dreamhost, we had only 1 customer make constant complaints from one of them, so we moved them back to the other hosting provider we used based in denver. Tho we wanted to keep them on a linux host, we just had to move them to stop the complaints from one customer. While I think the problems that Dh has been have have been a bear, we understand that there will be problems, but whining about them doesn’t get them fixed, action get’s them fixed.
(also, not at tim)Stop whining, and act with the best of your ability to resolve the problem.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Those of you who like to come here and flame:
Remember you’ve been given an flaming target graciously by DH owning up to what’s going on - most hosts don’t even admit to the things they have. They’ll pass it off as something mid-stream then fix it and not even tell you or not even respond to you. You should be impressed by the honesty and transparency of DH.
Does not getting your email suck? Sure. Does losing money suck because your customers who aren’t getting their email threaten to leave you and do? Royally. Does realizing you should have gotten a managed hosting solution in the first place probably with your own hardware and a dedicated box suck? Priceless ‘Suckage’. Nothing hurts more than the truth and nothing is more difficult to own up to. I’m not surprised so many of you come in here and conveniently find a way to remove yourselves from contributing to the situation you’re in.
This is one of the best deals you can get - you get more here for your money than almost any other place I’ve researched. And the others - I wouldn’t trust their networks no matter how cheap they are. Seriously. Take some responsibility for yourselves and be thankful that you’re even with a host who will give you details down to the specs on hardware - not that any of you flaming DH cares about that since your egos don’t allow you to find yourselves culpable.
I for one, commend DH for owning up to these things and continuing to own up and report.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
While DH is having a rough spell, I have been super satisfied up until now. I can completely understand peoples frustration, but I think they are definitely doing their best at getting our sites back up. The plain fact is occasionally shit happens, life is imperfect.
Much love to the DH team.
Do your best. I know you’ll fix it.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
“I am really frustrated by all these problems, and im sure you guys at dreamhost are also. Please get it resolved ASAP, i am wasting time and money. Thanks”
and
“Whining is tiresome, sure, but so is having at least one of your websites/databases down every day and not being able to access email for days. And being told that it’s fixed. Then seeing that’s it’s not fixed. Report to customer service. Report. Wait. Repeat. This has been going on for months.”
So why are you still using Dreamhost?
I had well over a year of nothing but great service and performance, but yes, I am also getting frustrated with the problems. However, I see a company that is doing everything they can to try and find/fix the problem and bends over backwards to keep folks informed.
And through all these problems, it has not effected every site I host here the same.. some have never been effected (I have over 30 domains across four different accounts) - except for the total outtages of course.
If you are that unhappy with Dreamhost, find someone else. Whining and junk won’t do much, if you seriously don’t think they know how bad things are for folks by this time, why would you want to be using them still anyways?
September 14th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
In agreement with MANY of the posts. Completely and utterly fed-up with all the problems. I realize the staff are trying to make improvements, but it just keeps getting worse. Bottlenecks, smtp outage, black listing…
Not sure I and my clients (who have sites hosted by DH because I BROUGHT THEM HERE) can stay much longer…if things do not improve asap.
Disgruntled.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
I almost never experience a problem other than rare email blackout/delay and wouldn’t even know there are so many issues if not for this site sending me constant feeds. I must admit the techno talk baffles me but I can’t believe the problems are that widespread and frequent.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
> I don’t understand the purpose of enabling these comments. To give opportunities for people to
> alternatively vent their futile frustration or to give virtual hugs to DH staff? Or for DH staff to be
> convinced that lots of people are reading this blog? Or?
People were already posting these types of comments in our official weblog already - often under entries which had absolutely nothing to do with the issues involved. As they are venting and/or hugging in response to specific issues, we felt that this would be a better venue for that sort of thing. It also gives us a single place to look to see if customers notice behavior that our automated tracking systems miss.
To the person who suggested that the problems may originate from outside of our network: Sadly, as much as we may be tempted to point to someone else, the problems definitely originate within our own network infrastructure (which is really better, as at least we have the ability to troubleshoot it).
- Jeff
September 14th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
> I must admit the techno talk baffles me but I can’t believe the problems
> are that widespread and frequent.
At the size we are at this point, even if a significant minority of our customers ever see problems that can translate into a lot of (understandably) unhappy people - which in turn results in a lot of weblog comments, etc. This issue is a bit more widespread than some others, but you are correct in that not every customer is experiencing the same problems.
- Jeff
September 14th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
In my four or five years experience of dealing with webhosts I’d say most have problems like this at least once a year. All people can hope for is speedy resolution, and honesty. To Dreamhost’s credit they’ve been honest about the problem. You try dealing with an webhost that won’t even admit to having problem. That’s when it gets really frustrating.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Do I need to keep submiting a trouble call because it keeps coming back saying my site is fine which it hasnt been for the last few days?
September 14th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
“To the person who suggested that the problems may originate from outside of our network: Sadly, as much as we may be tempted to point to someone else, the problems definitely originate within our own network infrastructure (which is really better, as at least we have the ability to troubleshoot it).”
Jeff,
not for nothing but you’ve had over 6 months to troubleshoot it and so far nothing had been done to bring any kind of stability to your networks.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Well thats it, Im now looking for a new host. I just moved my site here 2 months ago and its been non stop issues. This just about confirms that this staff doesnt know what they are doing. Good lord.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
September 14th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
If you want to check your e-mail, telnet in and use pine is still slow but its working.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
you really should use dedicated vendors for email in my opinion. Email is critical to a company and I would suggest that you use a dedicated vendor with a good SLA to ensure that you own’t have issues like this in the future.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Granville - Yes, but if they don’t want people to complain here, they should turn them off.
And yes, moving to a new host is an option. I’m in the process, but it’s not something I can do quickly with a lot of domains and applications hosted with Dreamhost. I’m close, but in the meantime, I’d like for my stuff to work.
September 14th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
“Aaron Nimocks Says:
September 14th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Do I need to keep submiting a trouble call because it keeps coming back saying my site is fine which it hasnt been for the last few days? ”
Just checked and its up
September 14th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Hope this helps…here is my traceroute to the bandini server as of 3:52 PM EDT
TraceRoute to 208.113.142.173 [green-bloggers.com]
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 0 0 0 66.98.244.1 gphou-66-98-244-1.ev1.net
2 0 0 0 66.98.241.16 gphou-66-98-241-16.ev1.net
3 0 0 0 66.98.240.11 gphou-66-98-240-11.ev1.net
4 9 1 1 38.112.25.157 f0-4.na21.b015619-0.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com
5 3 2 2 66.28.64.65 g10-3-0.core01.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com
6 2 2 3 154.54.5.198 t9-1.mpd01.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com
7 8 7 9 154.54.3.177 t2-3.mpd01.dfw01.atlas.cogentco.com
8 9 6 7 154.54.6.62 t4-2.mpd01.dfw03.atlas.cogentco.com
9 9 9 7 154.54.3.41 g2-0-0.core01.dfw03.atlas.cogentco.com
10 11 11 12 154.54.11.134 verio.dfw03.atlas.cogentco.com
11 54 55 55 129.250.4.196 p16-1-2-0.r21.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
12 55 55 55 129.250.5.47 xe-4-1.r01.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
13 55 55 55 129.250.2.129 xe-1-2.r00.lsanca17.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
14 48 47 47 206.183.201.162 te-1-3.a00.lsanca17.us.ce.verio.net
15 47 47 47 216.52.255.31 border1.po1-bbnet1.ext1a.lax.pnap.net
16 57 55 57 216.52.220.78 newdream-1.border1.ext1a.lax.pnap.net
17 59 57 57 208.113.142.173 basic-bongo.bandini.dreamhost.com
September 14th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Hiya, just thought I’d try and balance out the comments by saying that my website’s responding quicker now, so something went right somewhere!
September 14th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
I am tired of hearing people say that DH is better because they open talk about their problems. Can we start naming names where the other webhost had similar problems for over 2 months and never told anyone about their issues?
September 14th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Things are faster for me, which is great…. all you ppl yelling at DH, THEY KNOW! These folks are STTTRRRESSSEED - If dealing with real time, live bugs in code has taught me anything its this, don’t stress the people trying to solve your problem, if you dont think they are doing everything they can you should just leave, if you think they are doing everything they can just be thankful.
Adam - I like your moves.
DH team, get some sleep, keep up the effort.
thanks
gfors
September 14th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
“my website’s responding quicker now”
Great. Mine’s still running like s**t. Hope you’re enjoying yourself.
September 14th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
I’d rather swim for shore, than drowned on a sinking ship.
September 14th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
My site seems pretty fast now.
FWIW, I am very impressed with the candor of the company, and the willingness to allow comments (knowing that most people are just going to use them to vent). I’m sure you guys are working really hard (and losing a lot of sleep) to get all this worked out, so thank you.
I’ve had dreamhost for 3 months now, and while my experience has been a bit rough due to these problems, I at least can see by reading other’s long-term experiences that this is not the norm…..so I’m going to stick it out.
September 14th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Hey, DH just wanted to let you know that my site is razzle and it is pipeing fast. I think that the tubes to england must be empty.
Anyways thanks for the improvements.
Peace Out DH, 1&1 Sucks
James Weston /.
September 14th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
I have a question for all of you who are experiencing email outages. Are you seeing issues using webmail, using a client on your local machine? For what it’s worth, I have almost never had an outage on my regular mail client, but webmail has been dreadful. Perhaps I am on a different server than many. Is this what others are seeing?
Just a reminder, if you dig through these comments, the one guy suggesting telneting in and using pine for the moment.
Here’s the pine site for those like me who have never used it:
http://www.washington.edu/pine/
Perhaps someone with more experience than I could post help for newbies.
Dave …
September 14th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Where is this dreamhoststatus site hosted? It is the only dreamhost site that always seems to be up.
September 14th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
I wonder what will happen if dreamhost.com host on the same type of hardware that we are using here…?
September 14th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I had an email glitch this morning. I am actually hosting my email somewhere else. I was told the glitch occured during a dns hiccup through dreamhost. Not sure if that *WAS* what happened, as this would just be my email host passing the buck on to dreamhost. But, it was only a minor 2 minute outage. All my emails hosted at Dreamhost have been fine of late. Are you able to ping your mail.yoursite.com?
To Dreamhost: Sorry you all are having these issues. I commend you for your forthright in coming forward with the issues. Please, get cots for your crew, and nice fluffy pillows for those 15 minute sleeps. I, for one, am still behind you and still have faith.
I do feel for all of those having problems. I’d say hang in there, but I am sure you’ve overheard that. Good luck to you all.