A domain is not opening from certain networks, traceroute stops in between

I'm trying to open my website, say example.com, and the request is timing out. However, www.example.com is opening fine. Also, both domains are working fine when using through a proxy (also working on isitdownrightnow.com)

I tried a traceroute on the two domains, and here is the output:

traceroute example.com
traceroute: Warning: example.com has multiple addresses; using 216.239.36.21
traceroute to example.com (216.239.36.21), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.84.0.1 (10.84.0.1)  3.860 ms  3.179 ms  3.562 ms
 2  10.29.0.42 (10.29.0.42)  1.675 ms  1.707 ms  1.821 ms
 3  * * *
 4  * * *
 5  * * *

traceroute www.example.com
traceroute to ghs.googlehosted.com (172.217.27.115), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.84.0.1 (10.84.0.1)  7.309 ms  8.445 ms  5.587 ms
 2  10.29.0.42 (10.29.0.42)  28.769 ms  14.107 ms  14.272 ms
 3  10.29.1.58 (10.29.1.58)  5.527 ms  9.530 ms  3.802 ms
 4  103.14.185.3 (103.14.185.3)  3.944 ms  3.702 ms
    103.14.185.1 (103.14.185.1)  8.681 ms
 5  118.201.215.13 (118.201.215.13)  7.606 ms
    203.116.246.101 (203.116.246.101)  4.416 ms  2.825 ms
 6  165.21.12.68 (165.21.12.68)  2.962 ms  2.700 ms
    w118012013.w118012.starhub.net.sg (203.118.12.13)  3.219 ms
 7  203.118.2.26 (203.118.2.26)  11.270 ms  3.088 ms
    203.208.190.21 (203.208.190.21)  6.476 ms
 8  72.14.210.117 (72.14.210.117)  18.269 ms
    anutli12.starhub.net.sg (203.118.12.6)  83.018 ms
    72.14.210.117 (72.14.210.117)  6.780 ms
 9  72.14.194.0 (72.14.194.0)  5.736 ms
    108.170.242.65 (108.170.242.65)  34.457 ms
    72.14.194.0 (72.14.194.0)  3.734 ms
10  209.85.242.197 (209.85.242.197)  11.556 ms  31.664 ms  28.546 ms
11  sin11s04-in-f115.1e100.net (172.217.27.115)  9.310 ms  40.297 ms
    209.85.242.197 (209.85.242.197)  9.148 ms

FYI, the site is hosted on Google Cloud. The DNS records consist of an A record for example.com pointing to 4 Google IPs, and a CNAME record for www.example.com that points to ghs.googlehosted.com.

I was wondering what could be the problem here, why is the request failing for example.com?

Any tips in the right direction would be helpful.

Solution 1:

I'm trying to open my website, say example.com, and the request is timing out. However, www.example.com is opening fine.

You do appear to have four A records for example.com (quizziz) and one CNAME for www.example.com, so this makes sense.

The most likely explanation for your general problem is that one or more of the four addresses for example.com isn't working properly (it is not correctly handling the request for some reason or connections to that address are failing or timing out).

Unfortunately, multiple A records are handed out randomly and do not necessarily mean your requests get routed to a "good" address automatically.

Also, both domains are working fine when using through a proxy (also working on https://www.isitdownrightnow.com)

Without knowing which address is actually being contacted, this may not mean anything reliable for example.com. And in this case, it seems we have established the www version with the CNAME works.

Observations

• Requests seemed to take a long time to work their way through Google's system. This could be causing time outs. I definitely experienced two connection timeouts in the browser (visiting the both the www and non-www versions of site) and was forced to reload the page to finish loading content.

• 216.239.38.21 seemed to work fine in-browser for me, in addition to the CNAME. I was not able to force the browser into testing the other IPs unfortunately.

• Even though I checked your DNS records, and all apparently had the correct gateway Google IPs (32, 34, 36, 38), I did get routed one time to 67.227.226.240 (Liquid Web Dedicated Hosting). Just a guess but this might be an older record cached somewhere else that hasn't expired yet.

Suggestions

My normal suggestion would be to test each address individually and try to find any culprit(s) that may not be working correctly.

However, these are generic Google gateway addresses for its services. Unfortunately, you may need to work with Google to resolve this.

Also, I would make sure your own network was handling the requests properly.