Korean Job Discussion Forums

[lovebug]

hm so we have an interesting problem. apologies if this has been addressed before as i tried to run a search and it didn't come up with much.

my boyfriend and i have had SK internet since we moved into our place in feb. we have 1 router and 2 computers and cable. if we unplug the cable, we can connect both computers to the internet at the same time. our internet is quite fast and we haven't had a problem with it til very recently.

over the last few months, i've noticed that youtube videos, even >2 min take a long time to load. then sites like wunderground.com started to load really slowly and then only load with the most basic html.
now the guardian.co.uk won't load on my boyfriend's computer at all. firefox is saying it's taking too long to respond. funnily enough, it will load on mine ok, but nytimes.com won't!

this is really weird since it's just some pages and others (gmail, fb) work just fine. my boyfriend's CT is calling SK today, but i feel like our problem is so strange that they'll just tell us that those sites happen to be down and it's not a problem of the ISP.

recently a friend at a SMOE school was told that some sites were not blocked by the school but by the school's own ISP. is it possible that this could be related?

any advice would be most helpful, even if it's simply a better explanation/clarification of the problem that we can present to SK when we call....

[crescent]

I can't be related. Did you check for Malware?

[crossmr]

I have SK and I've had an issue since Saturday morning. Several sites, including this one, will no longer load. It is clearly an SK problem. I've installed hotspot shield which immediately fixes the problem, and I've connected my laptop wirelessly to my KT provided Wibro Egg which also immediately fixes the problem. The affected sites are completely random. This site is hosted in california, another affected site is hosted in germany. A traceroute actually shows connectivity almost all the way to the sites which is very strange and makes it difficult to track down whether the blame actually lies with SK broadband or if a few random sites have suddenly decided to start blocking traffic from SK Broadband.

3 of the sites I use quite frequently no longer function and I've also found 3 or 4 other sites I use occasionally which will no longer load.

Youtube videos have been hit and miss for everyone. There are several threads complaining about that here, so forget the issues with that. I've noticed all weekend that Digg has been loading half broken when I'm not using hotspot shield, most times. Sometimes it loads fine, but the rest of the time not so much.

I can get to guardian.co.uk just fine. I've been planning to get a hold of SK. They have English help apparently but I've been having issues getting a hold of it.

if the CT isn't technically inclined having them call SK will most likely be useless. SK will blame the site, especially because they're not Korean sites, or they'll blame your machine, and that will be the end of it.

[lovebug]

thanks, crossmr. it definitely sounds like we have the same problem. it's so random!

my boyfriend takes his computer into work with him and can access all the sites at work. so it's not malware or anything else related specifically to his computer.
if SK give us a hard time, what if we threaten to break our contract with them? it would be pretty lame, but possible to prove that sites don't work only in our home on their network (through video/digital photos/screenshots) thus proving they aren't holding up their end of the contract?
i tried to put hotspot shield on my computer last year and couldn't get it to work. i'm certainly more motivated to try it again, but if it still doesn't work, it doesn't look like it'll be a good option for me...

[AsiaESLbound]

Yep. MSN and imdb.com became inaccessible today where it says they time out due to server taking too long to respond, but nothing comes up on a Google search about them being down. I too am having problems with my SK connection, but got a decent 4MB per second torrent download 2 hours ago. Youtube is always super slow where I have to wait 5 to 10 minutes for an average music video to load. Careerbuilder.com wouldn't ever load. Many news videos on other sites won't play where it says, "sorry, this video is unavailable in your region."

[crossmr]

Don't rush to break your contract yet. I got a hold of someone today. I explained it to him and sent some logs. After I explained that I used to be a network engineer and that I'd talked to other foreigners having the same problem he got off it being my machine and seemed helpful and to understand. He is passing it up to their engineers to check.

[lovebug]

that's great, crossmr. thanks for calling. did he give you his name and/or specific contact info?
it might be helpful when we call to cite other foreigners with this problem specifically. feel free to PM me and we can share more details that might be helpful for subsequent calls.

it'd be really nice to know the reason (if any) for why some specific sites are working and not working.

here's a partial list of sites we've had problems with:

guardian.co.uk
nytimes.com
linkedin.com
about.com sites
wikihow.com
all wiki sites
wunderground.com

we can access imdb.com but can't access msn.com

also, why is my boyfriend getting a 'connection reset' message on his firefox, and i'm simply getting a message that's saying 'too long to respond'?

[crossmr]

Guardian works for me.
as does wikipedia and imdb

The guy I talked to said that the first couple sites he tried worked from their office (daves and another) if you don't mind, PM your ip address, I wouldn't mind checking if you and I are on the same subnet or not.

You can get it at ipchicken.com

routing is a complicated thing and routing tables can get corrupted. If there is a corruption in a place where the ISPs customer base doesn't usually go it might go unnoticed for awhile. Most koreans probably aren't hitting a lot of the same sites you and I are, so if there are issues related to routing and their servers, it might never come up.

He gave me his name, but it went quick. The number was an extension of their 106 number. I think I can contact them through their email, you can try giving it an email, and for fun stick a note in at the top "I'm a foreign customer having the same problem as the other foreign customer" and give your website list. They probably didn't have that many foreigners emailing them today. [email protected] if you want to send them a proper more detailed email, send me a pm, and I'll tell you exactly what to put in it.

[crossmr]

woo~ I woke up this morning and several of the sites that I couldn't access before seem to be working now. How about you?

[crossmr]

Got a call from SK this afternoon, apparently it was some problem affecting random customers since the middle of last week. They applied some fix early this morning and apparently it worked.