Could only reach the forums changing my DNS

[polonus]

Seems now with status secure: https://dnsviz.net/d/forum.avast.com/dnssec/

Also see: https://dnssec-analyzer.verisignlabs.com/forum.avast.com

pol

[bob3160]

I personally haven't had any problem getting to and using the forum for some time.
Don't know if location has a bearing.

[schmidthouse]

I also have not had a problem with forum access.
 BC, Canada

[DavidR]

I personally haven't had any problem getting to and using the forum for some time.
Don't know if location has a bearing.

The issue didn't seem to impact North America, but European countries and Australasia countries were certainly heavily impacted.

[polonus]

L.S.,

I can affirm, what our good forum friend DavidR states, that the errors were occuring just outside of the USA,  that was not hit from such the forums being down.
(DNS-security-misconfigurations whatsoever), a thing I can only say now in hindsight.

The errors subsided  for me even earlier and well as soon as I found out and tried to connect through a US server.

Good I had the dnsjumper tool to do that on the fly on Windows 11.
So good I could  then report about the nasty hick-ups here.

In case of similar or comparable situations one could use a recon and research tool like:

https://dnsdumpster.com/ (a free domain search tool for security assessment purposes).

Now again back to our usual tasks and all that kind of normality,

polonus

[CraigB]

@ CraigB
Is this when you try to connect directly or when you use a site checking function like downforeveryoneorjustme.com, previously this too would be reporting forum.avast.com is down, but not now.

It happened when trying to connect directly to the forum, I've had no access problems at all until yesterday though I do have page lock ups quite frequently, sometimes 30 or more seconds for page creation.

[DavidR]

@ CraigB
Is this when you try to connect directly or when you use a site checking function like downforeveryoneorjustme.com, previously this too would be reporting forum.avast.com is down, but not now.

It happened when trying to connect directly to the forum, I've had no access problems at all until yesterday though I do have page lock ups quite frequently, sometimes 30 or more seconds for page creation.

You are probably the same as me, as in I don't log off and since the new updates (not blocked all the bl00dy time), I occasionally get a can't connect warning, but opening the forum index page usually resolves that.

From it being pretty slick on page loading I have also had some long page load times (though not excessive/frequent).

[bob3160]

I just received the following reply from Avast:
"Hi, guys are working on the problem. Actually it should be already fixed
but I found out that once I am logged in, I am not able to access some topics
in the forum so guys are analyzing the issue right now."

[DavidR]

I just received the following reply from Avast:
"Hi, guys are working on the problem. Actually it should be already fixed
but I found out that once I am logged in, I am not able to access some topics
in the forum so guys are analyzing the issue right now."

What is that old saying, "a day late and a dollar short" but better late than never.

The next questions:
1.  Why did it take so long to get an action as there doesn't appear to be any forum presence now that r@vast appears to have gone (and there are 9 bloody Administrators)  ?
2.  What is to prevent this happening again, e.g. who is monitoring forum software error logs to get early action in the result of a recurrence ?
3.  Should this ever happen again, how the hell do we report it and to whom  ?
4.  Finally I thought the Slack channel was meant to help with communication between certain users and the Avast Team, appears to have failed in this regard.

In my Reply #50:
I managed to get in contact with a long serving Avast Team member, but in order to do that I had to manage to get on to the forums to seek one out from old topics, etc.

[bob3160]

"4.  Finally I thought the Slack channel was meant to help with communication between certain users and the Avast Team, appears to have failed in this regard."
Not totally. It just took a lot longer than I expected.
I also understand that most folks no longer use Slack but are on Teams.
A change made after the merger.

[DavidR]

"4.  Finally I thought the Slack channel was meant to help with communication between certain users and the Avast Team, appears to have failed in this regard."
Not totally. It just took a lot longer than I expected.
I also understand that most folks no longer use Slack but are on Teams.
A change made after the merger.

Noted, but after I had managed via a direct approach (when found).

However, we now need a distinct pathway to connect to someone or a specific link (for some long term forum members, etc.) in the event of a future problem.  Not wait until it happens again.  Which was what my previous post was all about.

[Rundvleeskroket]

I'm still having difficulty reaching the forum from european IP's. Some work, some don't. It's like flipping a coin.

Whatever was messed up, still isn't properly fixed. Hopefully this will improve soon.

It's weird to me that things like DNS entries and such can take days to fully propagate. Technically it should be a matter of seconds.

[rocksteady]

I have had problems reaching the forum again this morning.
Different error message this time, stating server is busy, try later.

EDIT: Now that I'm in, page loading is exceptionally slow.

[polonus]

Read a bit about, what goes on behind the cloud  here:

https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/adversaries-and-anonymity-systems-the-basics/
(info-source : IVPN)

Fine tool to use: https://dnsdumpster.com/  (dns.recon and research)
There you see that forum.avast.com maps in USA.
[AKAMAI-ASN1 United States]

See: https://host.io/avast.com

pol

[Rundvleeskroket]

The last few days seem to give less trouble, but I was just met with this:

Connection Problems

Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.

That's not Akamai being silly.