• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

FTP issue

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

IZON

Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2003
Location
London
For some reason I can't log onto my ISP's FTP server; having done so in the past, I now keep getting a 'connect failure' notice. However with the same user ID and password settings I can log on to other FTP sites no problem but not my ISP's. I've spent an entire afternoon trying to figure this out, including numerous and expensive calls to India (where my ISP has outsourced its call centre to).

I was wondering if the 127.0.0.1 host loop-back trick might be the problem, my ISP is www.tiscali.co.uk as I have a few 'tiscali' entries in my host file simillar to the ones below:

127.0.0.1 adsweb.tiscali.cz
127.0.0.1 adsweb.tiscali.de
127.0.0.1 adsweb.tiscali.it
127.0.0.1 js.tiscali.fr
127.0.0.1 tiscali.weborama.fr
127.0.0.1 tiscaliplus.weborama.fr
127.0.0.1 ad.tiscali.com
127.0.0.1 ad.tiscali.com

As you can see, none of them match 'www.tiscali.co.uk' Do they need to identical for the host to block them, or is having tiscali in the name sufficient to cause the host to block?
 
My ISP continues to cause me grief.

I’m having problems connecting to my ISP’s FTP server to access my websapce. I have connected to their FTP server on several other occasions without a problem, but in the last week or so it’s all gone pair shaped. I use WS_FTP software as recommended by Tiscali. Each time I attempt to connect I get a ‘connection failure’ notice. WS_FTP software comes with a number of extra FTP addresses (about 50) and I can connect to all of them within seconds. So I’m confused about the ‘connection failure’ to Tiscali’s FTP address (ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk).

Each time I call Tiscali,they frogmarch me through my User ID and Password settings which are fine and then they run out of ideas. Their next tactic is to find fault with my pc, which initially focussed on my firewall settings as I use Zone Alarm v4.5. After toying with it I managed to ensure that the Tiscali server is among the trusted/internet settings. That didn’t work, then disabled the firewall (and AntiVirus) entirely at boot, and still I couldn’t connect. Then I was told I'd need to upload an index.htm file to the my webspace before I could use it, guess what? I need to connect to their FTP server ‘first’ a point which was initially lost on them.

A number of calls later I was told that I had exceeded my webspace which is 100MB and I’d have to download some of the files, 'but I’ve only used 3mb' I told them and how can I download files if I can’t connect…? I mentioned the fact that I could connect to many other FTP servers but theirs, yet they refuse to consider that there may be a fault on their side. Calling their India support centre at 50p/m is proving expensive and fruitless. Before I ditch Tiscali, can anyone shed some light on this conundrum?
 
Last edited:
open up a command line window and type 'tracert ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk' and see if you get a series of steps. If it goes straight to 127.0.0.1 then yes your hosts file entries are a problem. Post the results here and we'll see what we can do
 
tracert results...

C:\WINDOWS>tracert ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk

Tracing route to ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk [192.168.0.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <10 ms <10 ms RELIC [192.168.0.1]

Trace complete.

I don't know if this is good or bad (or the cause), but it's showing the IP address of my pc which I've named RELIC. Can that be right ?

ping results....

C:\WINDOWS>ping ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk

Pinging ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk [192.168.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=32
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 0ms
 
Well the tracert is completing rather than timing out plus the ping is routing to your local IP and not the ftp server IP, so I would guess it is something to do with your hosts file, just comment out the tiscali entries in the hosts file and try pinging the server, it should resolve to 212.74.114.60 when its working correctly and not your local IP.

-Chris
 
I did a find and replace search in the all the host files (there are three of them) and replaced the word 'tiscali' with 'EDIT'. Still no joy.
 
can you do a traceroute for one of the ftp sites you can reach. I just find it odd that it resolves the tiscali ftp site to your default gateway.
 
coin said:
can you do a traceroute for one of the ftp sites you can reach. I just find it odd that it resolves the tiscali ftp site to your default gateway.

Sure, this tracert is to the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, California


Tracing route to pebbles.eps.mcgill.ca [132.206.152.3]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 164 ms 168 ms 172 ms gac00376447-tiscali-hg25.mdip.bt.net [213.120.78
.90]
2 165 ms 170 ms 170 ms 192.168.250.200
3 150 ms 172 ms 171 ms vlan2.switch0-mk.as9105.net [212.74.112.38]
4 165 ms 173 ms 172 ms 212.74.106.209
5 166 ms 170 ms 170 ms pos3-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.108.10]
6 181 ms 170 ms 171 ms so-1-2-0.lon12.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.77.41]
7 258 ms 246 ms 244 ms so-1-1-1.nyc33.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.81.102]
8 257 ms 246 ms 271 ms p5-0.core01.jfk05.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.11.
25]
9 253 ms 272 ms 271 ms p14-0.core02.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.
165]
10 263 ms 245 ms 272 ms p15-0.core01.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.1
3]
11 286 ms 297 ms 297 ms RISQ.demarc.cogentco.com [38.112.7.86]
12 296 ms 299 ms 296 ms amtrl-rq.RISQ.NET [132.202.200.10]
13 287 ms 299 ms 299 ms dmtrl-rq.risq.net [132.202.80.41]
14 287 ms 297 ms 297 ms cmtrl-mg.RISQ.NET [132.202.101.126]
15 286 ms 299 ms 297 ms mcgillbis-internet.dmtrl-um.risq.net [132.202.60
.189]

...it continues to completion, as you can see it does not resolve to my pc [192.168.0.1] in the first jump.



Here's another to Caldera , a Linux distro site.

Tracing route to ftp.caldera.com [216.250.128.13]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 181 ms 200 ms 197 ms gac00376447-tiscali-hg25.mdip.bt.net [213.120.78
.90]
2 162 ms 173 ms 171 ms 192.168.250.200
3 169 ms 173 ms 174 ms vlan2.switch0-mk.as9105.net [212.74.112.38]
4 162 ms 174 ms 173 ms 212.74.106.209
5 199 ms 173 ms 172 ms pos3-0.lon10.as9105.net [212.74.108.10]
6 186 ms 197 ms 198 ms so-7-2-0.lon12.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.77.33]
7 260 ms 271 ms 273 ms so-1-0-0.was10.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.81.89]
8 261 ms 274 ms 272 ms ge6-0d308.IR1.Ashburn-VA.us.xo.net [206.111.0.10
5]
9 266 ms 275 ms 273 ms p5-0-0.RAR2.Washington-DC.us.xo.net [65.106.3.13
7]
10 293 ms 299 ms 294 ms p6-0-0.RAR1.Chicago-IL.us.xo.net [65.106.0.45]
11 307 ms 325 ms 318 ms p6-0-0.RAR2.Denver-CO.us.xo.net [65.106.0.25]
12 307 ms 298 ms 298 ms p0-0-0d0.RAR1.Denver-CO.us.xo.net [65.106.1.73]

13 307 ms 325 ms 319 ms p4-0-0.MAR1.SaltLake-UT.us.xo.net [65.106.6.74]

14 308 ms 324 ms 322 ms p0-0.CHR1.SaltLake-UT.us.xo.net [207.88.83.42]
15 314 ms 323 ms 322 ms 205.158.14.114.ptr.us.xo.net [205.158.14.114]
16
...again it continues to completion. (I've cut the last few hops off 'cos I haven't figured out how to scroll the dos window up or down to include the beginning and end of tracert info)
 
Last edited:
Hmm, I musta missed something Smokeys, this is what I get:-

C:\WINDOWS>nslookup ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk
Bad command or file name

I'm running 98SE.
 
do a find for it on your hard drive. If you can't find it anywhere on your hard drive, physically disconnect from the internet and try the ping again and see if it resolves. If it does then its resolving from the hosts file.
 
not sure if this command works on 98SE but try clearing out your DNS cache on your machine as well, open up an MS-DOS window and type winpcfg /flushdns
 
Smokeys said:
do a find for it on your hard drive. If you can't find it anywhere on your hard drive, physically disconnect from the internet and try the ping again and see if it resolves. If it does then its resolving from the hosts file.

Wasn't able to locate the address anywhere on the hard drive(s), came off-line, did a ping and this came up:-

C:\WINDOWS>ping ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk

Pinging ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk [192.168.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=32
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=32

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 0ms

Earlier in this thread I mentioned that I did a Find and Replace on all three host files (I have no idea why I have three, actually there are four, the forth one belongs to 98se and remains unused, the other three belong to a spyblock software called SpyStopper which I've disabled at boot). Within the host files I came up with about 30 references to 'tiscali' none of them matched ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk but I replaced all references to tiscali with the word EDIT.

One thing I've noticed is that there are 'elements' of ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk buried in other host names like:

127.0.0.1 my.webtrendslive.com
127.0.0.1 ads.express.co.uk
127.0.0.1 ftp.befree.com
127.0.0.1 ad.EDITnet.it (this use to read ad.tiscali.it)

I was wondering if these 'elements' would be enough to cause the tracert and ping results to resolve at my pc (I've tried pinging other addresses in local host and none of them resolve back to my pc like ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk).

Guess my real question is, how do I stop ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk resolving at my pc when there's no 'ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk' present in the local host file?


coin said:
not sure if this command works on 98SE but try clearing out your DNS cache on your machine as well, open up an MS-DOS window and type winpcfg /flushdns
No joy with that coin, just get another 'bad command line' response
 
can you try typing just winipcfg and let us know what your default DNS server is listed as. The other possiblity here is that your PC is using your router as a DNS server and it is the router that is resolving the name wrong. The hosts file should only match exact terms only not by parts, even so there is no mention of the IP 192.168.0.1. Also when you search for the hosts file you need to make sure you can see hidden files. The proper hosts file doesnt have an extension on the end
 
coin said:
can you try typing just winipcfg and let us know what your default DNS server is listed as. The other possiblity here is that your PC is using your router as a DNS server and it is the router that is resolving the name wrong. The hosts file should only match exact terms only not by parts, even so there is no mention of the IP 192.168.0.1. Also when you search for the hosts file you need to make sure you can see hidden files. The proper hosts file doesnt have an extension on the end


Primary DNS is 212.74.112.66 (& Secondary DNS 212.74.112.67 ) Unless I'm mistaken there's no router configured to this rig, I still connect direct with a dial up modem :( . I did a search for host and came up with a number of other host files, only one didn't have an extenstion at the end, it contained no ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk host address.
 
Why not just delete or at least move the host out of the windows directory to see if they are actually causing this issue?

The only hosts file you should have should be in your \windows\ directory according to this site.
 
Solved.

I traced the problem to the Network > DNS Configuration > TCI/IP settings for the Dial up adapter/modem. Apparently, whilst trying to configure ICS for my home network I'd 'enabled' the DNS settings and placed ftp.myweb.tiscali.co.uk in the Host box, this in turn created a loop-back to 192.168.0.1. Man this has caused me so much grief, glad it's fixed :temper:
 
Back