Shopsmith Forums

Anyone else notice all the websites, forums, main website, etc. was down late last night?

Yes. The forums were down for awhile.

dstensland wrote:Yes. The forums were down for awhile.

Which could have been caused by the internet being down.

dusty wrote:Which could have been caused by the internet being down.

So was the 'other SS site'.

Not sure I understand 'internet down'?

JPG40504 wrote:So was the 'other SS site'.

Not sure I understand 'internet down'?

Maybe this will provide some incite.

http://whatismyipaddress.com/traceroute-tool

Using the tool provided in the link, run a traceroute on 24.123.75.51 (the IP address for shopsmith.net).

This will show you how many different connection points (different IP address's) are utilized in a connection between yourself and shopsmith. Anyone of those goes down and your link is down.

Now sometimes the system will find alternate paths but not always.

Another way to do the same thing:

In Windows: Start > Programs> Accessories> Command Prompt

At the command prompt C:\> type tracert shopsmith.net (or any other URL you might be interested in)

BTW: If you do this for both shopsmith.com and shopsmith.net you will see that both use the same IP address.


Yes, the shopsmith server could have been down.

dusty wrote:Maybe this will provide some incite.

http://whatismyipaddress.com/traceroute-tool

Using the tool provided in the link, run a traceroute on 24.123.75.51 (the IP address for shopsmith.net).

This will show you how many different connection points (different IP address's) are utilized in a connection between yourself and shopsmith. Anyone of those goes down and your link is down.

Now sometimes the system will find alternate paths but not always.

Yes, the shopsmith server could have been down.

I have always thought that the 'path' is an ever changing thing. Even different parts of a 'message/page' can be 'passed' through different 'paths'.

Often when I get 'stuck', I back up and start over. This is different from 'trying again'.

For sure I think it was 'unresponsive'.

dusty wrote:At the command prompt C:\> type tracert shopsmith.net (or any other URL you might be interested in)

You can also use the ping command

At the command prompt C:\> type ping shopsmith.net

JPG40504 wrote:I have always thought that the 'path' is an ever changing thing. Even different parts of a 'message/page' can be 'passed' through different 'paths'.

That is pretty close to accurate. All those entries you see when you run a traceroute are the routers between yourself and the other site. The internet routing protocols are designed so that the routes are constantly being updated and the best path calculated. Internet backbone routers have multiple connections to multiple neighbor routers. If a router goes down, the neighbor routers know about it almost instantly and can find another path.

"Last Hop" routers typically don't have the same level of redundancy as backbone routers. Those would be your home/business router and possibly even your ISP depending on how big they are. So if your router dies, or the router in Shopsmith's offices dies (if that's where their web servers are located), or even your ISP or Shopsmith's ISP were to have an outage, that could block your access. Of course, if it were you or your ISP, then it wouldn't just be Shopsmith's site you couldn't access! Any outage anywhere else along the path is more than likely going to be rerouted almost immediately and you may or may not even notice.

If Shopsmith uses a web hosting company so their web site lives on a server in a datacenter somewhere else, then that datacenter typically has multiple redundant internet connections, redundant power, etc. So an outage there is more likely to be a server failure than an internet outage.

And that's putting it all rather simply.

Dayton Ohio area had an ice storm yesterday.

Is it possible that these frequent 'resets' I have been experiencing lately are path related?