I have a facebook account which I use just for sharing pictures with family around the world.
A week ago I started getting occasionally redirected to histle.org.
It has happened when;
* trying to access Facebook.com to log in
* during the log in process when moving from one screen to another
* when using the application when clicking on another page/link.
* when using the "Back" button
* when refreshing the screen (F5)
- Nothing has changed on the computer in at least a month
- This has started about a week ago, but since then happens frequently
- It is not consistent
- It cannot be reproduced at will nor avoided at will
- It only affects Facebook and happens to no other site
- I am pretty sure that there is nothing malicious on the computer
- There is one other person in the world to whom this is happening.
- Identical symptoms and behaviours, no commonality between our setups, apps or extensions.
- I use Windows 7, Chrome and nothing particularly out of the ordinary
- The only app in Facebook is to permit my Samsung S4 to access the account
- The only extensions in Chrome are Adblock and Ghostery, and removing them has no impact.
- Windows 7 does not use a host file as previously, so that's not corrupt or changed.
- Flushing DNS has no impact
- Pinging facebook.com and histle.org works and delivers different and correct IP addresses
The *only* thing I can find which even makes me look twice is that I apparently have three DNS servers defined;
190.***.*.**
200.**.***.**
200.**.*.*
Perhaps this is normal and/or usual.
I assume that 190... is my own router so there must be some kind of table or cache in the router. But I can't find it and in any case this may be a complete red herring.
There are examples a couple of years ago of weird Facebook re-routes which were perceived to be down to a particular Cisco router. But I do not use that router.
I am totally at a loss. Any useful suggestions?
|
You mention the DNS servers defined... Are they definitely on those subnets? Unless you've changed it, most home routers will probably be on a 192.168.x.x subnet (192.168 being a private address range). So I don't think those entries relate to the router you have.
So from what you say, if you did an:
ipconfig /all
I take it those DNS servers appear on the PC in question? And if yes, are they statically defined or is the router dishing out those via the DHCP scope? On my old BT Homehub it would have itself as the DNS server for the network and the router would be using BT DNS servers by default. But an old Linksys router used to supply the DNS server IPs it had itself been allocated via DHCP - i.e. the Linksys router was not a DNS server.
If this was me, I'd perhaps try a few nslookup's from a command line to see what is being returned and by what DNS server. Usually the servers are used in a round-robin fashion so if it was say the 190.x.x.x server causing problems, it would only happen when accessing facebook when that DNS server was used.
The other thing I'd try is setting DNS on the computer (and/or router) to use the Google DNS server IP addresses.
EDIT: You say you assume 190.x.x.x is the router... so it would be the same address as the default gateway showing in the ipconfig command.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Sat 1 Jun 13 at 23:14
|
|
Accessing FB through chrome? Disable the all chrome extensions and see how that goes.
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 1 Jun 13 at 23:23
|
>>Disable the all chrome extensions and see how that goes
No change.
|
>>You say you assume 190.x.x.x is the router.
Which is pretty dumb now you repeat it. Embarrassing I typed it, really.
No, it isn't the router. The router is 192.168.xx.xx as you would expect.
The three DNS servers defined are;
190.160.0.15
200.74.121.12
200.83.1.5
The nslookup results are returned by 190 by default but do not appear to be different from those returned by 200 if forced.
However, the IP addresses returned for www.facebook.com by my defined DNS servers is 31.13.69.176 whereas when using 8.8.8.8. or 4.4.4.4 (Google Public DNS) then I get 31.13.69.80
Trouble is, it is an intermittent fault so its difficult to know anything for sure.
Is there any downside from using the Google DNS? Response seems quick enough.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sat 1 Jun 13 at 23:56
|
Changing to Google DNS has made the problem go away. However, as its intermittent I'll only know if its truly gone after a few hours.
|
There is no downside to using different DNS servers. Neither the Google ones nor the ones you currently use actually know the IP address(es) used by other organisations - they request the IP addresses on your behalf basically. They are non-authorative lookups - okay they're going to do some caching.
So change to the Google DNS servers and see how it goes.
For what it's worth, my nslookup for www.facebook.com was 31.13.72.17. But the differences are to be expected from a load balancing perspective.
|
>>But the differences are to be expected from a load balancing perspective.
I'm not sure that's it.
My previously defined DNS servers consistently return .176 whereas the Google DNS consistently returns .80 - if it were load balancing wouldn't you expect it to change? Or indeed be consistent, but not different simply because of the DNS server used?
|
|
I do very much appreciate your thoughts though, because I was, and perhaps am, stumped.
|
>> Is there any downside from using the Google DNS? Response seems quick enough.
None really. I use them all the time due to inherent crappiness of the Talk Talk supplied defaults.
|
Well, having changed to the Google DNS, and thus being pushed to a different Facebook IP address the problem seems to have stopped.
I wonder if it is a Facebook problem. I've dropped them an e-mail, but unless it comes back I;m going to stop worrying about it.
Thank you for your help.
|
Facebook redirect... - rtj70
