Econet websites unavailable unless you’re using an Econet connection

L.S.M Kabweza Avatar
Econet Unavailable

We use Mweb (now iWayAfrica) for our primary internet connection at the office. I have 3 mobile broadband dongles from Africom, Telecel and Econet, which I use in order of the most affordable and usable at any given time. Now the problem with Econet sites is that, unless I’m using the Econet dongle, I cannot open them.

Right now for example, I’m on the Mweb connection and can’t open the Econet websites www.econet.co.zw , comms.econetmobile.co.zw and www.econetbroadband.co.zw. These sites won’t open on the Telecel and Africom connections either. A friend using a ZOL internet connection tells me the three websites won’t open for her.

Econet Unavailable

We’ve told Econet business development employees and they say nothing is wrong because, well, it opens perfectly from their end! We know it does.

Tracing the route the internet route of the three websites to find where they are hosted, you can see the trace ends at Econet servers in Zimbabwe. We’re figuring this is something Econet can do something about.

It’s been like this for some months now so not sure if it’s because nobody at Econet cares to actually take a look or they’re finding it difficult to fix. Whatever the reason, it needs to be fixed. The websites serve subscribers with information they can’t get anywhere else. They’re also a gateway to subscriber mailboxes, and that must count for some prompt action in fixing it. Unless ofcourse Econet deliberately won’t let you access the mail services if you’re on a rival connection.

A great alternative if Econet is finding this non-core business a pain would be just hosting the websites at a local company that specializes in hosting. We know at least one that might be able to handle hosting a site for a business the size of Econet.

And it’s not just Econet with these avoidable misconfigurations; Africom won’t fix the resolution of the afri-com.com name no matter how many times I complain. You can only get to the Africom website by typing in the full www.afri-com.com (with the www). The PowerTel website too has been having lots of issues lately; today for example it’s returning the nasty errors below about a Joomla session crashing.

powetel-web-error

Surely, these problems are not that hard to fix.

We (and I’m sure Econet, Africom and PowerTel) would love to know your thoughts about this. What would be the best strategy for these companies? Just host their websites at dedicated hosting companies? Employ dedicated web teams? Or maybe just care more about their internet platforms?

78 comments

  1. Debonair

    This is very dissapointing indeed.

  2. Macd

    l tried all the links you provided and from where lm(outside zim), they are all working.

    From what you are saying, all three ISP are lacking inter-connection between themselves and reluctant to resolve it and there is nothing a customer can do to fix it.

    I believe its inter-connection problem, all ISP use BGP( Boarder Gateway Protocol) for them to be able to connect their customers to the out-side world. According to BGP guidelines you need public AS numbers. AS(Autonomous System) is way of separating or grouping routers under one administrator or ISP.

    Simply said, Econet can be using BGP and public AS number 1, Africom 2 and Powertel 3. What it means by default is that Econet BGP will never connect or form a relationship with the other two by default and vis versa. This means Econet or Powertel or Africom will be able to reach internet but never sites between them selves.

    Whats needs to be done to resolve such a situation is to bring all the ISPs network gurus (not management) and allow them to work-out how they are going to configure EBGP amonst there PE networks.

    Only then can people in Econet be able to access Powertel or Africom services

    1. TeleEnthusiast

      l ALSO tried all the[ECONET] links provided and from where l am( SA), they are all NOT working.

  3. SaFaith

    Also you can’t send emails on Mweb MS Outlook account with Econet and vice versa. Inconveniencing & time wasting.

    1. Fourwallsinaroom

      Thats an authentication issue, either call econet and ask them to allow your IP. Or alternatively authenticate outgoing mail. Its to prevent spma issues.

    2. Macd

      MS Outlook use POP3, you need help with settings from Econet

    3. ini

      @90315263c133399a559a343a33adfa4e:disqus Please use your ISP’s smtp servers for sending out emails. When connected to the net using Econet/Ecoweb connection use: smtp2.ecoweb.co.zw as your outgoing server. Note: server does not require authentication.

  4. Munhu

    I think the way you presented the issue is all wrong if you are really willing to help, but i do not blame you, this is news worthy.

  5. Pindilemhandu

    why do you guys always come around putting econet in the dust, it’s starting to look suspicious i tell you. Email Strive or someone and let us live in a happier world.

    1. Maston

      Pindile i think the whole idea around a blog is sharing ideas, problems and anything else in between econet and all the IT and Telecoms companies should appreciate blogs like this one, it makes them clean up their acts this might the only feedback they get on their products. It starting o sound like you work at Econet

  6. Chiko Mukwenha

    Look folks, whatever the problem is these companies are supposed to give us good service. i don’t care if the problem is wiring or not. thats crap, it gotta be fixed period.

    thanks for bringing this up.

  7. Seedz

    I really dont think that Zimbabwean companies have really grasped the power of the web. They do not invest in it or rather should i say they do not understand it. You cannot even find some of the “BIG’ companies on search engines. I saw an Econet employee at the IT Conference last year he was telling they do not have a web team that was before their site got hacked. No wonder this day and age its an abomination. Get a web team together get serious or your businesses will be stuck in the stoneage

  8. Seedz

    I really dont think that Zimbabwean companies have really grasped the power of the web. They do not invest in it or rather should i say they do not understand it. You cannot even find some of the “BIG’ companies on search engines. I saw an Econet employee at the IT Conference last year he was telling they do not have a web team that was before their site got hacked. No wonder this day and age its an abomination. Get a web team together get serious or your businesses will be stuck in the stoneage

  9. Ben Roberts

    I will make sure it is fixed.
    Nobody has brought it to my teams attention.
    Watch this space
    Regards
    Ben

    1. Anonymous

      Thank you Ben.

      1. Ben Roberts

        Mr Kabweza,
        Please contact me offline. It works fine from zol and connects via local peering connections.

        Regards
        Ben

      2. Macd

        Kabweza, there is nothing to thank this guy for, lm sure wrote this and went straight to bed. Econet is charging a lot of money for some questionable services.

        He claim his team have not brought it to his attention, what a louse and useless team he has. How can they tell him when they have no clue at all that such problems are occurring.

        10hrs gone and lm sure nothing done yet

    2. Macd

      shouldn’t your team be testing for such problems and resolve them before they affect customers? lt sounds PR to me Ben

      1. Ben Roberts

        Macd
        Problem probably is with the other ISPs. We obviously proactively monitor all our econet websites and they work fine from the whole Internet, and also from zol.
        I don’t work for econet but I am the technical director of econets upstream provider of Internet bandwidth and the biggest supplier of bandwidth to the country. So it’s not PR as you suggest. I have already contacted other local ISPs and Zol confirmed it’s working fine, I need to check with others.

        Thanks
        Ben

        1. Macd

          Ben
          lm still not convinced especially when you start to shift blame to other ISPs who will easily blame it back to Econet and the customer still loses because of ISP squabbles.

          Correct if lm wrong, ZOL is a IAP not a ISP, which means Econet has good connectivity to ZOL, so testing your network from ZOL does not mean you have good connectivity to all major ISP in Zim.

          The question Ben is, do you ISPs in Zim got optimum internet connection between yourselves or you are using ZOL or other IAP as a Internet Exchange point?

          1. Yvee

            ZOL is an ISP not an IAP

            1. Macd

              l got that, thank you

  10. Nyakudirwa

    Macd, there is the Zimbabwe Internet Exchange (Zinx) that connects the ISPs in Zimbabwe, but you find some major IAPs not connecting to ZINX, Powertel for example and a good number of ISPs are now connecting to powertel. We need everybody in the industry working together to get Zim internet services going as they shld. We got players like Valley tech in operations now, stuff like Zinx connectivity is what you wld think they would prioritise but they are not there. With the size of Econet, wen there is a sneeze everybody catches the cold and the market leader they shld assume leadership, but we also need the other players to spruce up their game

    1. Macd

      Thanx Nyakudirwa, it shows clearly that we have selfish ISPs who are into the business for quick buck and l not be surprised that they might even contemplate to sabotage each other infrastructure to gain silly business advantage.

  11. Anonymous

    ahh finally!!

    people on the yoafrica network have had never ending issues getting to the econet network for some months now….infact.. we have reported this issue to econet many times, and have been referred to ecoweb. when we contacted ecoweb, they knew absolutely nothing of the problem..and said we need to speak to econet because it is a problem with the network. as you can imagine, this became a never ending blame game.

    funny enough.. some days, people on the econet network can get to the yoafrica network, but never the other way round…

    even right now it is STILL an issue (oh yeah, before people start bleeting about yoafrica being the cause, yoafrica have confirmed this is an econet issue):

    kt@kt-desktop:~$ traceroute http://www.econetbroadband.co.zw
    traceroute to http://www.econetbroadband.co.zw (217.74.235.63), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
    1 196.44.177.65 (196.44.177.65) 1.519 ms 1.538 ms 1.554 ms
    2 core-mad-toucan-gi-1-1.net.yoafrica.com (196.44.176.254) 1.055 ms 1.096 ms 1.222 ms
    3 172.30.1.90 (172.30.1.90) 7.153 ms 7.150 ms 7.132 ms
    4 10.201.0.5 (10.201.0.5) 7.081 ms 7.067 ms 7.048 ms
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    1. Ben Roberts

      Please contact me off list. You know where i am, we don’t need to troubleshoot this on a discussion board.

  12. David

    Hi All

    ZOL is an ISP, not an IAP. As of last night and this morning I can open http://www.econet.co.zw fine. Both ZOL and Ecoweb (and thus Econet) peer locally via ZINX (the Zimbabwe Internet Exchange). TelOne and PowerTel do not, which is a shame as it costs us to exchange traffic with them in London at our cost not theirs!

    ZINX runs on BGP and all major ISPs and IAPs have AS numbers for global peering.

    I suspect this was a temporary routing or server issue. But obviously I cannot confirm unless was still failing! Next time please post a traceroute!

    On a side note – who cares if you can’t reach Econet website 😉 ZOL one rocks 🙂

    David Behr
    CEO
    ZOL

  13. David

    Hi All

    ZOL is an ISP, not an IAP. As of last night and this morning I can open http://www.econet.co.zw fine. Both ZOL and Ecoweb (and thus Econet) peer locally via ZINX (the Zimbabwe Internet Exchange). TelOne and PowerTel do not, which is a shame as it costs us to exchange traffic with them in London at our cost not theirs!

    ZINX runs on BGP and all major ISPs and IAPs have AS numbers for global peering.

    I suspect this was a temporary routing or server issue. But obviously I cannot confirm unless was still failing! Next time please post a traceroute!

    On a side note – who cares if you can’t reach Econet website 😉 ZOL one rocks 🙂

    David Behr
    CEO
    ZOL

    1. Macd

      David and Ben

      You guys stop playing politics with paying customers. One of you used to provide internet to the other hence good connectivity between you, lm sure you are the same side of the coin on this matter.

      But on the other hand, thanks David for highlighting the issue of BGP and internet exchange which l have been saying from my first posting. Why are you guys not exchanging locally? l was at Powertel one day and l was shocked to find out that even they are not connected to Telone but they are both government entities?

      Are you scared of transit traffic or what?

  14. David

    Hi Macd

    Perhaps you misunderstood my post. We *already* are exchanging locally (and have been for about 10 years) – as are Africom, Telco, Yo, Mweb, Utande and many other smaller ISPs and IAPs. Any ISP/IAP with its own IP addresses and AS number is FREE to join ZINX. We certainly cannot walk into PowerTel or TelOne and put a gun to their head and say “join ZINX or else” – it is their decision. Joining ZINX is filling in a simple form, submitting to ZISPA (that’s the Zim ISP Association), running a link to Eastgate (where it physically is located) and within 24 hours you will be part of ZINX! It’s easy, it’s free, it’s for the benefit of everyone. ZISPA/ZINX have in the past certainly made TelOne and PowerTel aware of the issue. We would love them to join! Both already have fiber cables to Eastgate!

    Each ISP is responsible for their own connection to ZINX. i.e. the connection to ZINX is as good as the ISP connecting wants it to be.

    Our connectivity/relationship to Ecoweb is no different to that of any peer of ZINX – nothing special there. I really would have loved to see a traceroute of this error so we could scientifically tell you why it failed, and who was to blame. Now I can only speculate!

    I agree with you on being being shocked! Maybe you can contact them and put pressure on them. Local transit traffic saves us a lot of money – we are far from scared of saving money!

    Regards

    David

    1. Ben Roberts

      100% David. Couldn’t have expressed it better myself.

      Ben

      1. Macd

        Ben
        lm still not convinced

    2. Macd

      Thanx David

      1. Me

        been following your posts, i think that you do not like Ben, but if you are someone who really needs to be objective, my suggestion, regardless of how much you hate him; at least listen to what he is saying, and where he says something sensible acknowledge him, thats maturity

    3. Daniel Private Com

      David

      We have been trying to connect to Zinx and also to register with ZISPA especially for our DNS servers. It has been 3 months now, all we got was an email that never get replied (admin
      @ziapa:twitter
      .org.zw) Would you kindly help by providing a physical address especially for Zispa as no one seems to know. We hear there is one Mr Holland who has the following non-functional numbers

      04 700363 / 700494 /
      700579. People out there are not even aware that ZISPA/ZINX is very difficult just to find. We have the joining fees ready, AS number, Border Router, we have our own IP block. Where on earth do you get ZINX and ZISPA. I would love to visit them first thing monday morning. Also do u have names, emails that we may also use other than admin
      at
      zispa.org.zw.

      1. David

        Daniel who is “we”? ZOL is one of the managers of ZINX – so contact me at ZOL and we can get you into ZINX immediately.

        ZISPA we can also help you with. For a number of technical and commercial reasons general public cannot register domains with ZISPA (I can see this opening a huge discussion!). If you are an ISP, if you have an AS number, your own IPs, and know how to configure BGP you must be smart enough to find ZINX and ZISPA!!!

  15. David

    @kthaker – http://www.econetbroadband.co.zw works fine from ZOL! We reach that site via ZINX. Maybe it is Econet, maybe it is Yo. Who knows! Move to ZOL and you can be happy 🙂

    I’m sorry you so frustrated to want to troubleshoot all this on a discussion board!

    1. David

      @kthaker – the penny just dropped! You work for a shareholder of YoAfrica 🙂 I think it might be more appropriate to declare your interest in these public forums. Like I said, maybe it is Yo, maybe it is Econet – but at least we know why you assume it is not Yo 🙂

      I don’t think these public bashings are appropriate from employees who have vested interests (especially undeclared ones). ZOL/Econet do have routing issues from time to time – it is the nature of the dynamic Internet and happens everywhere. It has never taken more than a few hours to resolve – at least that’s my personal experience.

      1. Anonymous

        Hi David,

        Fortunately my interests are based on the many customers we have, who have experienced issues with our services while being on the econet network. i work for webdev, which as far as i can tell is not really yoafrica. its fair to say that my interests are just to allow as many people as i can to use our services, without issues.

        i personally have tried to sort this issue with econet/ecoweb in the past without much effect. Im sorry you feel that im assuming that yoafrica is not the problem, but from the many emails, phone calls, and physical confrontations to Yo offices, i can tell you that im fairly sure that its not their problem. econet on the other hand, have been less than helpful when i’ve approached them with the issues that were going on.. and as the writer of this article on techzim quoted:

        “We’ve told Econet business development employees and they say nothing is wrong because, well, it opens perfectly from their end! We know it does.”

        you have some kind of an idea of the customer service level people have received from econet.

        i do agree with you that this is an issue between ISP’s…and in the end, its up to them to fix the issues that their network users report, regardless of whose problem it is. how do you get the ball rolling in the first place? when no one takes you seriously?

        as an employee of webdev, i spend alot of time, trying to work around the issues that ISP’s encounter…because most of the time, as long as people can get to google, everything on their network is fine. sadly (and realistically), alot of service providers have this attitude.

        As you can imagine, this is not only frustrating for us to try and get fixed (as a company trying to provide “e” services to Zimbabweans, who are also just customers on the yoafrica network), but think of the many end users who just want to get on with their lives.

        1. David

          Hi Kalpesh

          The problem you have is that you are a customer of an ISP and you are trying to resolve an issue with a peer of your supplier. It’s the same issue ZOL has when we try to contact an upstream supplier of say PowerTel or TelOne – they are not interested.

          Your ISP is Yo. Yo needs to take this up on behalf of you!

          Regards

          David

          1. Anonymous

            David, i completely agree with you… however, like you had said previously, ISP’s are responsible for their own connections at ZINX.

            When issues like this come up, and both providers, A and B insist their connections are fine.. what do you do?

            You stand to lose alot of customers in your own business because of environmental issues that are beyond your control. the best you can do is either work around it, or get involved and try and get someone to resolve the issue…before its too late.

            1. David

              You vote with your feet 🙂 Change ISP! All these Econet sites are opening fine on ZOL.

      2. Macd

        l dont work for anybody and have not conflict of interest at all. Just a concerned Zimbo

  16. Anonymous

    We have been unable to connect to Econet hosted services from our YoAfrica links for some time, (problem was first noticed in 2009) at the time we were attempting to integrate with a payment system hosted on Econet’s (or Ecoweb) servers and could not get through, after much digging around with the help of YoAfrica we proved the problem was that Econet had messed up the IP range on their return routes to YoAfrica. After majour hassles with Econet via email etc we finally got this fixed. It worked for a couple of months and broke again.

    This is a long standing problem to most Zim ISPs, which indicates Econet is not connected or wrongly configured on Zinx (which connects Mweb, Zol, YoAfrica to each other).

    We have reported this on many occasions over the last two years, it is not something new that Econet was not made aware of.

    We have also been asking for details on getting an incoming connection to a machine with a Econet USB dongle for many months, a traceroute shows it leaving Yoafrica and then dieing as soon as it hits Econet.

    Seen as emails seem to fall on deaf ears its good to see this site might get Econets attention.

  17. Macd

    Ben
    The problem is right at your door, Econet is at a loss here. It looks like you are having redistribution problem between you IBGP and BGP. l did a traceroute which made me think so, you can easily see that my packets hits london exchange into your liquidtelecom, then all hell broke lose, l begin to lose packets.

    Have a look:
    7 * xe-10-1-0.lon10.ip4.tinet.net (89.149.185.74) 20.595 ms *
    8 * liquidtelecom-gw.ip4.tinet.net (77.67.65.58) 21.334 ms 21.736 ms 9 46.17.232.5 (46.17.232.5) 247.855 ms 247.952 ms 248.820 ms
    10 * * *
    11 46.17.232.24 (46.17.232.24) 270.062 ms 270.592 ms *
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    Why is it showing your internal private IP range, thus a serious misconfiguration on your part l think?

  18. Ben Roberts

    macd,
    Thank you for your contribution. I am on top of the issue and talking to the ISPs mentioned earlier in the post, as well as Econet staff.
    Whilst we confirm ZOL CAN access econet websites I confirm that Yo and others cant.
    I think one of our routers is missing a backwards route on internal routing protocol (NOT BGP).
    The private IPs in the trace are annoying, but not the cause, but will ask someone to chnage them as they are very annoying.

    1. Macd

      Ben
      You are now talking like a proper technical CTO, thank you. The problem is right in your internal network. Spend time bashing heads in your NOC not affected ISPs otherwise you might need to talk to my ISP as well and everyone’s ISPs.

      l mentioned BGP in relation to IBGP then your IGP by pointing towards redistribution problem in the form of internal private IP addresses being injected into BGP which should never happen.

      Thank you.

  19. Ben Roberts

    macd,
    I have been doing that. I havent bashed any ISPs, though everone else on this thread (apart from David) has. I just commented at early stage that it might be some ISPs with fault but that I would see it fixed sir!.

    You see as David says, we, the ISPs want our customers to be able to see each others websites and customer websites that we host and we DO all know each other and work together to fix the issues. And we DO want our local traffic exchanged locally and have worked on this together with local peering for over 10 years 😉 We do know how all this routing and BGP and all that good stuff works, but we dont need to share every detail with the public.

    But when it comes to everything else we do compete with each other. May be hard to grasp that we co-operate with our competitors, but we do, as its in our customers interests that they can access all websites and that all the world can access websites they host.

    I am on case and calling someone else now, I know where fault lies i think.

    Chrs,
    Ben

    1. Anonymous

      awesome! econet websites are coming up on yoafrica connections 🙂 thank you!

      1. Macd

        You are welcome!

  20. Ben Roberts

    macd,
    I dont believe I have bashed any ISPs in this thread. I am working with ISPs and testing BGP and routing and and local peering and all that good stuff that we ISPs do in the background and dont bore our customers with.

    So for the record. We DO compete with other ISPs, but we DO want our customers to be able to access the whole web, and we DO want our customers websites to be accessible by the whole web. That means we do work and co-operate with each other to make sure our networks route to each other. And furthermore, most of the ISPs including Davids one and myself do all really LIKE to peer locally as it makes better experience for our customers and saves us money. So we peer with each other at public points and on private links too. If other ISPs dont like to join in with our open invitation to have local peering links, then all of their customers suffer and they have higher costs, so its utterly their own choice if they want to locally peer with us or not, either at ZINX or privately.

    The problem is reffered to Econets web support team and seems to be one just on Econets web server LAN/DMZ firewall. I will follow it till its fixed and talking to person responsible.

    We obviously want ALL of Zimbabwe to be able to access Econets web pages as we want all Zimbabweans to be able to see Econets lovely mobile phone products, and all other ISPs want Econet broadband customers to see their lovely web pages with lovely (competing) broadband offers.

    Never was any local peering or BGP issues, or any conspriacy of us purposefully not connecting to each other, but a lively debate however 🙂

    Regards,
    Ben

    1. Macd

      Ben
      Now lm impressed, its good when people own up to their actions. Just out of curiosity, how is web server LAN/DMZ firewall pumping out your internal private IPs? Still sounds like IGP then IBGP then BGP misconfiguration to me!

      How about petition our gvt to enact a law which force every ISP to connect to our local exchange!

      1. David

        IMHO the less govts interfere and force people to do things the better – generally! And I’m talking about govts everywhere!

        Have more faith in market forces and competition! If your ISP does not peer locally, you will have bad local browsing speeds and local email, so then vote with your feet and leave your ISP! Move to one that does value local content and connectivity.

  21. Ben Roberts

    Oh sorry for posting the same things twice, i thought my earlier post didnt work.

    The info you ask for about firewall is confidential I am afraid, but in broad summary should use NAT. An IGP is used that isnt iBGP.

    The idea of laws to govern our peering policies doesnt seem necessary. As all the privately owned ones are mostly members of ZISPA and peer at ZINX anyhow. Two that chose not to are (as pointed out earlier) government owned.
    The choice to peer or not, is a commercial one and I cannot think of a single country in Africa or anywhere in the world that has a law forcing ISPs to peer.
    In the USA for example the big ISPs dont peer with smaller ones and would rather charge people or ‘sell them transit’. ISPs tend to have open peering policies (peer with everyone, selective peering policies (peer with a few people that they wish to for own advantage), or restrictive peering policy (wont peer with anyone except a few select members of big boys club).

    Hope this sheds some light on the subject to you.

    1. Macd

      Ben
      Do you use iBGP or not in your core network? if not are you using MPLS?

      1. Ben Roberts

        Both and others too.

  22. Passpot

    still not working if not on econetbroadband

  23. Bethel Goka

    the error on the Powertel website message on the Powertel website means there is an error with the jos_session table. This could easily be solved by repairing the table.

    I think Tech Companies must employ like econet, telecel, powertel must employ an in-house web designer-developer to develop and manage their websites. The web has become an alternative store-front, advertsing platform, as well as a source info.

    Therefore its imperative that these companies take their online strategies seriously because incidents are tad bunglesome

  24. Macd

    24hrs and still counting……….. Econet customer services is the most arrogant and irresponsible ISP in Zimba.

    l spare Ben but most of Econet staff seems like they operate from a shabeen, they are a clueless lot.

    Econet everything is working from where lm(outside zim) which still points to there internal network from the trace logs l did. Where as Ben was on top of it yesterday according to him, l think now everything is on top of him.

    PE and POP routers failing to filter internal network, its a cut and run job Econet is doing. l now understand why the likes of Powertel does not want anything to do with econet locally. They are the kind who will load you with there traffic and refuse to pay transit fees.

    Like David said yesterday, move away from such providers. Telecel, please be quick

  25. Ben Roberts

    You really expect a response to all of that?

    Chap is still working on looking at whats wrong with website. as mentioned previously it seems to be at the website itself. Its not obvious what is wrong, but can confirm that nothing was altered yesterday though we did ping from the web server to YoAfrica then Yo Africa confirmed that they could reach the websites.

    I am talking to Web admin chap at Econet, though.

    I appreciate everyone may have had experiences getting through customer services, but the issue is in hand with the exact right people now and fault ticket is open and to be followed to conclusion.

    If anyone wants to leave useful helpful feedback then please do tell me which ISPs are currently not able to connect to Econet websites.

    1. Macd

      Ben
      l appreciate your efforts but from my experience with Econet in Zim, you have not started yet. The econet personnel are the most unfriendly and rude people l have ever met.

      l guess you are not in Zimbabwe and you are being fed information from Zimbabwe. Ask anybody here, remote control does not work. You have to be there to see for yourself.

      Nothing has change from yester, have a look :

      7 * xe-5-3-0.lon10.ip4.tinet.net (89.149.185.234) 126.339 ms *
      8 * * liquidtelecom-gw.ip4.tinet.net (77.67.65.58) 22.107 ms
      9 46.17.232.5 (46.17.232.5) 247.529 ms 247.648 ms 247.716 ms
      10 * * *
      11 46.17.232.24 (46.17.232.24) 266.907 ms 267.003 ms *
      12 * * *
      13 * * *
      14 * * *
      15 * * *
      16 * * *

      Somebody in Zim is pulling a fast one on you Ben!

  26. Ben Roberts

    Yes but the website works from outside.

    I am aware of stars in the trace and I know why they are there and they arent actually a problem. I am sorry you find them quite so annoying, but not affacting me. And yes, Nothing has changed since yesterday, but a small change is planned to help troubleshooting. I dont really need to share much more detail than that
    And nobody is pulling a fast one on me. I am working with one of my Econet colleauges who is very cabable and knowledgable, and I can say I very much have enjoyed working with all my friends and colleagues there for the last 10 years. I am not currently sitting in Zimbabwe but I am frequently there with my colleauges, friends and customers.

  27. Macd

    OK l might agree that trace is being killed by firewall hence no response. But it still interesting to note that from outside zim, you web server is working and responding fine dishing out requested pages, why is not doing the same from people inside Zim?

    l still believe there is more to it than a mere LAN/DMZ NAT problem as you are claiming. The fact that you are now pulling non-disclosure defends makes it even more interesting.

  28. Ben Roberts

    I have been told its working from Africom now too. Still waiting for anyone to tell me if there are any ISPs that cant connect still. If there are then I will look at it.

    As mentioned we didnt change anything last night but it did start working at the same time as we pinged out from the web server. Best guess would be that server itself had an arp cache issue to its default gateway that cleared by pinging out. We are planning a small change on firewall but clearly an ISP would never disclose any detail of his firewall configuration to any party outside, let alone a public forum. I am sure it must be obvious why. There is no dark conspriacy here dude. Lets just rejoice that more of Zimbabwe can access our lovely websites. And sorry, it really isnt that interesting, just normal day to day problem that us tech guys resolve as due course.
    Leaving it at that unless any new reports arise of people unable to connect.

  29. Macd

    Ben
    Agreed, if people are getting respond and getting connected as you are claiming, then thats good news. l never asked for exact configs or layout of your network, but was just challenging what you were saying from different dimensions because where l work at BBC(British Bottom Cleaners) we have no use for them trust me!

    But it has been an enlightening chat!

    thanx

  30. Nyakudirwa

    Why dont you put the whole trace result Macd, from the first line so we all can see where you coming from and where you tracing to

    1. Macd

      the issue of trace has been resolved, Ben pointed out that their firewall is the one cutting icmp which l believe is a good security measure.

  31. Muchamaya

    i dont see private IPs in that trace

    1. Macd

      true, there was a bit of mix-up between private IP addresses and class A addresses,

  32. Nyakudirwa

    Kabweza, is it still fair to have the topic implying Econet is unreachable from anywhere else but from Econet domain when David can access from London and from ZOL there is access. I suppose yo africa migh have a problem

    1. Macd

      the issue has always been like that from the beginning, people in Zim which are not on econet where not able to access econet where as if you outside zim, you can.

  33. Ben Roberts

    Err except its fixed we think and its confirmed that Africom and Yo can now access our websites.

    I return to give final update. Private IPs are now removed from the path to the websites.
    My trace below. Some people might see stars on MPLS hops. Thank you Robert.

    May I please ask the forum that I have the priveledge of the last word on this? I expect not haha
    Private IPs removed from the path

    H:>tracert http://www.econet.co.zwTracing route to http://www.econet.co.zw [217.15.122.100]over a maximum of 30 hops:
    Tracing route to http://www.econet.co.zw [217.15.122.100]over a maximum of 30 hops:
    1 24 ms 1 ms 1 ms 217.15.112.85 2 228 ms 228 ms 226 ms 46.17.232.7 3 234 ms 234 ms 234 ms 46.17.232.15 4 239 ms 239 ms 239 ms 46.17.232.24 5 239 ms 240 ms 239 ms 46.17.233.5 6 239 ms 239 ms 239 ms wfalls-wil2.ecoweb.co.zw [217.15.120.238] 7 240 ms 240 ms 240 ms ibills.econet.co.zw [217.15.122.100]
    Trace complete.
    H:>

    1. Macd

      Ben

      Thanx Ben and lm very glad now for two things:

      1. that everything is working.

      2. that you have unintentionally answered my question you were avoiding to answer that Econet use MPLS instead of iBGP at its core network.

      Again well done you have shown great leadership and l really admire that. We need a lot like you and David, thanx guys, internet in Zim will never be the same again.

      1. Ben Roberts

        I answered question already.
        You asked if I used ibgp or mpls routing protocols.

        I answered “both, and others too”.

        1. Macd

          you have been outstanding throughout, keep the good work going

  34. Yunketsui

    I just looked at this post today and have been going through the comments. I do believe that econet customer care is pathetic and the fact that they did not bother to come and explain their side of the story goes a long way in showing how poor their service is. Thank you very much Ben, you took the initiative to get this sorted out. I work for one of the IAP’s and tried taking up the issue with econet when i failed to open my econetmail from work but they told it worked fine from their end and left it at that.

    Love the way your people do business Dave (hope my boss does not see this or I am fired)

  35. Yunketsui

    I just looked at this post today and have been going through the comments. I do believe that econet customer care is pathetic and the fact that they did not bother to come and explain their side of the story goes a long way in showing how poor their service is. Thank you very much Ben, you took the initiative to get this sorted out. I work for one of the IAP’s and tried taking up the issue with econet when i failed to open my econetmail from work but they told it worked fine from their end and left it at that.

    Love the way your people do business Dave (hope my boss does not see this or I am fired)

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