I have what is probably a simple question for any geek readers who might be reading or lurking.
WTF is up with IMDb.com? It has long been one of my regularly visited sites, but in the past couple of weeks it has become all but unreachable. This morning I was just fed up, so I decided to investigate (at least to the limited extent I am capable of investigating such mysteries). I found that a number of people are complaining about IMDb.com being slow or down, so I did obvious thing, and ran a traceroute here:
IP address: 72.21.210.29
Host name: imdb.com
Alias: imdb.com
72.21.210.29 is from United States(US) in region North AmericaTraceRoute from Network-Tools.com to 72.21.210.29 [imdb.com]
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 0 1 0 8.9.232.73 xe-5-3-0.edge3.dallas1.level3.net
2 3 0 0 4.69.145.254 vlan90.csw4.dallas1.level3.net
3 0 0 0 4.69.151.170 ae-93-93.ebr3.dallas1.level3.net
4 20 20 20 4.69.134.22 ae-7-7.ebr3.atlanta2.level3.net
5 33 33 33 4.69.132.86 ae-2-2.ebr1.washington1.level3.net
6 33 33 37 4.69.134.142 ae-91-91.csw4.washington1.level3.net
7 33 33 33 4.69.149.206 ae-4-90.edge2.washington1.level3.net
8 Timed out Timed out Timed out –
9 Timed out Timed out Timed out –
10 Timed out Timed out Timed out –
11 Timed out Timed out Timed out –Trace aborted.
Did it twice. Same result. Next I attempted to ping 72.21.210.29. It timed out:
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.C:\>ping 72.21.210.29
Pinging 72.21.210.29 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.Ping statistics for 72.21.210.29:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),C:\>
So I googled the last IP address (4.69.149.206) at which the traceroute stopped, and found that others are having the same IMDb timeout there.
So what’s up with 4.69.149.206? It’s a place” I’d never heard of called MarkMonitor (whatever the hell that is), said to be used by half the top Fortune 100 companies to protect against infringement. According to the home page, MarkMonitor “delivers advanced technology and expertise to protect the reputations and revenue of the world’s leading brands.” They claim to protect against, well, a lot of stuff:
MarkMonitor Brand Protection preserves key elements of your brand’s value—customer trust, loyalty, and the reputation on which they depend—by helping to eliminate confusing and fraudulent use of your brand online. Leveraging the industry’s widest access to online data sources and continuously monitoring more Internet channels than any other solution, it safeguards brand equity, web traffic, marketing investments, revenue and reputation from paid search scams, unauthorized channels, counterfeit and grey market sales, false association, cybersquatting and other online threats.
MarkMonitor AntiPiracy™
MarkMonitor AntiPiracy protects an enterprise’s revenues by pinpointing, monitoring and enforcing on the illegal distribution and promotion of pirated digital content—movies, music, software, games and e-books. As the industry’s most comprehensive anti-piracy solution, MarkMonitor AntiPiracy detects illegal download activity and related promotional activity across the widest-array of Internet channels including, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, user generated content sites, blogs, video streaming sites, usenet services, search engines, social media and other websites.
Wow. Might I have just infringed on them by quoting them? I mean, it’s a complex world out there, and you can’t just quote things, even if your goal is simply to discuss what you’re quoting.
Now, I have no idea whether there is any kind of conspiracy going on, and I don’t mean to be a conspiracy theorist; I only want to be able to utilize IMDb. Is that asking too much of the bleeping Internet? It’s not as if this is some podunk little struggling site; IMDb is owned by Amazon.com, from which I buy a lot of stuff, so I can legitimately claim to be one of IMDb’s subsidizers. I’m not stealing trademarked or copyrighting stuff, so I don’t understand what may be going on here.
I went to this site, which told me the following:
Site imdb.com is up for everyone, it is down just for you.
PINGING IMDB.COM @ 72.21.206.80
Ping failed…
Ping failed…
Ping failed…
Ping failed…* Ping failure does not necessary mean that the website is not working. Ping may be disabled on host by the sysadmin.
STATUS REPORT
This query was served in 0.32 s by our website status checker tool and we also received a HTTP 301 response code. If the host is still unreachable, not loading you should first check your computer’s network connection and your web browser’s default settings.
There was no problem I could see with my settings, and like I say, this is only a recent development. However, it did occur to me that the problem might be with Firefox (with which I have trouble regularly), so I tried opening IMDb.com in Chrome. Same deal. Nothing.
I then tried Internet Explorer and VOILA! The site is open. But then, when I ran a traceroute from IE, once again, IMDb timed out at the same MarkMonitor address. How can the home page be opening in IE when it times out?
Like I say, this ought to be a simple question, but I’m an ignoramus in geek matters….
(IMDb, btw, is blocked completely in China. The hell with that issue right now; I only want it to work in Firefox and Chrome.)
Comments
10 responses to “Fix my Internet, dammit!
(The endlessly growing complexity of simple tasks…)”
You think that’s bad????
I have an Amazon Prime account. I spend a LOT of money at Amazon, including streaming video. Amazon recently decided that video will only work with goddam Internet Exploder. Not Firefox, Chrome or Safari. Just Effin’ Exploiter. Did I mention Internet Gatesifier sucks wombats and takes farging FOREVER to load??
(What happens is it runs the video for all of about 10 seconds and sends an error message that Flash is out of date. Is not, I updated it 3 different times, it’s some sort of browser bullpoop)
Is Amazon getting too big for their pantoffles? Really, they could use a little competition to keep them in line.
@Man Mountain Molehill. Try Opera – it’s small enough that bribed-by-MS sites often forget to block it. (IMDB worked fine…)
I don’t use Amazon streaming video so can’t check that, sorry.
[…] researching my inability to get IMDb.com to open, I learned about a fascinating million-dollar-lawsuit that initially made […]
Thanks, Kathy. I should try Opera. But why are these companies acting like little children? You might think an outfit like IMDb (to say nothing of Amazon) would want all visitors to get there.
Something still does not quite make sense.
Remember, trace route is a series of pings with the time-to-live byte incremented for each successive packet sent until the destination site is reached or the maximum time-to-live parameter value is reached.
When the packet expires, the server or router detecting the timeout sends a response back to the original sending computer and does not transmit the packet to the next location along the route.
If the servers or routers have ping disabled, you will get the timeout notifications in your trace route even though the destination site may be working fine.
I’m using Chrome, and IMDB comes up fine, but I still get the timeout responses using ping and trace route you noted above. In other cases, you even find intermediate server/router timeout notifications, but a positive response from the final destination server.
One possibility is that the IMDB site could be under a DOS(denial-of-service) attack. Being able to get through to the site occasionally is often a symptom of an attack; variations in the sending of packets by the attacking (usually zombie) computers can account for this.
I just tried Opera. Doesn’t solve the problem. Back in the good old days Opera had an option to pretend it was Internet Explorer. Doesn’t seem to do that any more.
Amazon is really starting to annoy me.
Opera 11
In Opera 11 you have to make a Panel visible by clicking the < button at the bottom left of the browser window. Then click the + symbol from the Panel and choose 'Customize…'. In the window that opens select the 'Button' tab then 'Preferences' and drag the 'Identify as Opera' combo box onto the top browser bar. It provides three options: Identify as Opera; Identify as Firefox; Identify as Internet Explorer.
I have Opera 12.12. Got as far as the buttons function. I can see the “Identify as Opera” slot, but all the functions on this screen are frozen. Everything else works. Weird. I’m going to dump the build and reload, and try this before going to Amazon.
New theory: Amazon has gone over to the dark side and is completely evil.
Aha!!!!
Sleipnir browser with the rendering engine set to Trident.
I just tried IMDB with Firefox. It works.
The complaint level must have reached a sufficient volume.