The IP address for "local-server" aka "hawaii.rr.com" hasn't changed in all the years I've had Road Runner. I have very old Ping Plotters so I can look back over the years and same IP always. I tried a new instance to both local server and hawaii.rr.com and same IP address still. I still get 100% packet loss on the final hop.

I switched to UDP packet type and got errors on all 5 targets. That has never worked for me but I have no idea why. I also tried ICMP raw sockets and that did not produce errors but didn't get through to local server. I suppose I should know this but how do I switch to tcp packets? I don't think it accessible via FTP but HTTP yes.

I can point my browser to 216.235.38.1 and get to hawaii.rr.com easily. As for the tier 3 tech being ignorant of this problem, he is one of Oceanic's best and has been there since before I got RR in June 2001. Sadly, it is not at all surprising that tier 3 might be in the dark about some configuration change that accidentally caused this. Oceanic is notorious for not communicating well with its employees. There is a user on Oahu (I'm on the Big Island) who gets 100% packet loss on the hop that is his UBR if he pings yahoo or some other site. Users at dslreports have told him that it is common for ISPs now to firewall routers. I don't believe for one minute that Oceanic has firewalled that particular UBR. I think there is some odd something going on much like whatever is causing me not to be able to ping local-server.

A few days later when I could ping local-server again, I happened to mention it to a former tier 3 tech who now is Oceanic management and he laughed about the tier 3 tech who had the same experience I did and then never actually told me what the problem was. We had a far ranging conversation about the network and I wasn't that concerned since it appeared fixed and I was more interested in getting some other questions answered. Then a couple of days later the problem began again and I wished I had gotten him to tell me exactly what caused it. He is not easy to contact but I will try as I really want to know what is going on! (Even if it starts working again suddenly).

I was hoping this was some common problem that you were familiar with. Leave it to me and Oceanic to come up with something weird. The tier 3 tech said to me (somewhat joking and somewhat serious) that Oceanic depends on me to find all the problems for them. I am well known to all tier 3 techs and they like that I run Ping Plotter because I sometimes see a problem before anyone else and I let them know and because I am online most of the day most days they have been able to fix a field problem that day before dark. I've been told that I alert them usually 3-6 hours before anyone else.

I am uploading an image of PP at the exact time on Feb 23 that local server again became unreachable. The graph shows 33% packet loss just before the 100% loss.