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Cloudflare confusion

YYCGuy
Organizer

Hello all, I'm wondering about DNS settings as follows.

 

The question:

Will reverting my Telus DNS settings back to default cause issues with either my web host and/or my cloudflare accounts?

 

The details:

(1) Web Hosting and Cloudflare: I have a website hosted on a shared server. I set up a CDN through Cloudflare in an effort to improve performance on my site. Meaning of course I replaced the hosting provider's default nameservers with the Cloudflare ones.

 

(2) Home router and Cloudflare. I had a look on my gateway ths morning and see that Telus DNS is also set to Cloudflare. I don't recall changing nameserver settings on my Telus account but I guess I must have. I'm the only one with admin access to my Telus account.

 

So given the above, what's the community's sage advice about the right/best Telus nameserver settings?

 

PS: Digging a bit led to another question about ping. This question is probably out of scope but if someone can speak to it, that would be great. I read in the cloudflare documentation that pings will time out and a better diagnostic is traceroute (to a cloudlare proxy subdomain). A hassle but ok fine I did so. When I do perform an arbitarry ping from my PC (both ethernet and WiFi), packes are lost as expected. Yes with I do the same ping from my phone (with data on and also data off ie. wifi only), pings work no problem. Phone is connected to the same home network my PC is. What gives?

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Nighthawk
Community Power User
Community Power User

Remember a ping test is NOT a reliable test for uptime / connections / etc. A good % of devices and domains out there will not respond to ping at all by design or administrator preference. The T3200 even has settings that will enable it to respond when pinged but pings are blocked by default. (Settings > Advanced > IGMP Setting)

 

Oh, IPv6 pinging. Do you have IPv6 enabled on your device as well as the gateway? The gateway should have it enabled already but I think the odd DSL connection may not have v6 enabled yet. I think.

 

If I ping that Google.com IPv6 address from the command line on my desktop it works. WinMTR doesn't support IPv6 yet.

 

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Nighthawk>ping 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e

Pinging 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e: time=25ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e: time=25ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e: time=25ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e: time=24ms

Ping statistics for 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 24ms, Maximum = 25ms, Average = 24ms


C:\Users\Nighthawk>ping google.com

Pinging google.com [2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e: time=25ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e: time=26ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e: time=26ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e: time=25ms

Ping statistics for 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 25ms, Maximum = 26ms, Average = 25ms

I also have the Cloudflare IPv6 DNS set on my PC too. I didn't put v6 custom DNS on the T3200.

 

One thing you could try is disabling IPv6 on your devices or T3200 itself and try pinging again.


If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Like" or mark as an accepted solution if it solves your trouble. 🙂

View solution in original post

7 REPLIES 7

Nighthawk
Community Power User
Community Power User

Your web host and cloudflare accounts are 100% separate from your home internet connection. Nothing you do on your end to the T3200 will impact either service.

 

When you say "Telus DNS was set to Cloudflare" on the T3200, what specifically are you seeing in the settings? The regular Telus name servers / addresses or something else? 

 

As for diagnostics, I use WinMTR instead. It's a free utility. Far more informative than just ping or traceroute alone. With a CDN you can expect the destination IP to change.


If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Like" or mark as an accepted solution if it solves your trouble. 🙂

Howdy Nighthawk,

 

Thank you and that's's exactly the info I was hoping to hear re: web host and cloudflare accounts being 100% separate from my Telus account.

 

When I said "Telus DNS was set to Cloudflare", I meant that based on the info in the WAN Connection Status section on the gateway home page. DNS is set as follows: DNS Address #1: 1.1.1.1  DNS Address #2: 1.0.0.1. Of course with these non-Telus settings,  I was told by Internet support this morning that they can't support troubleshooting beyond a basic point. Understandable but annoying nonetheless.

 

And in a funny case of deja vu, it was a helpful Telus user by the name of Nighthawk who suggested these DNS settings to me, back from a thread on another topic in April 2018. You are everywhere sir! (or ma'am if that's the case, don't wanna be sexist).

 

Thanks also for the WinMTR tip, I'll add it to my PortableApps stick for a test drive.

 

Regarding pinging problems (and before trying WinMTR), this one's bugging me a bit at the moment. There must be some other as yet unknown transient factor preventing me from pinging anything today. Power cycling the router didn't help. DNS settings mentioned above haven't changed in months. CDN and web host have nothing to do with it, as you say. I can ping from my phone (both wifi and data) but not from my PC (neither wifi nor ethernet). So weird.

Nighthawk
Community Power User
Community Power User

Yes, the Cloudflare DNS is the one I use as well. So far I'm not having any issues. 🙂

 

A lot of devices just don't respond to pings. Is there a specific one you're trying to test to?


If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Like" or mark as an accepted solution if it solves your trouble. 🙂

Oh no...

 

It must be a configuration issue somewhere on the router. I can't ping anything from my PC, neither ethernet nor wifi. I can ping everything all day long from my android with data only. As soon as I turn wifi back on the phone, pings fail for the same sites. I'm using huge sites with huge uptime expectations: google, cnn, timeanddate.com for example. I think I mentioned I power cycled the router earlier today. What the h is going on??

 

PC:

Pinging google.com [2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.

 

Terminal Emulator (Android)

h1:/ $ ping google.com

ping: unknown host google.com

 

 

Nighthawk
Community Power User
Community Power User

Remember a ping test is NOT a reliable test for uptime / connections / etc. A good % of devices and domains out there will not respond to ping at all by design or administrator preference. The T3200 even has settings that will enable it to respond when pinged but pings are blocked by default. (Settings > Advanced > IGMP Setting)

 

Oh, IPv6 pinging. Do you have IPv6 enabled on your device as well as the gateway? The gateway should have it enabled already but I think the odd DSL connection may not have v6 enabled yet. I think.

 

If I ping that Google.com IPv6 address from the command line on my desktop it works. WinMTR doesn't support IPv6 yet.

 

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Nighthawk>ping 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e

Pinging 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e: time=25ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e: time=25ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e: time=25ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e: time=24ms

Ping statistics for 2607:f8b0:400a:808::200e:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 24ms, Maximum = 25ms, Average = 24ms


C:\Users\Nighthawk>ping google.com

Pinging google.com [2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e: time=25ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e: time=26ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e: time=26ms
Reply from 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e: time=25ms

Ping statistics for 2607:f8b0:400a:803::200e:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 25ms, Maximum = 26ms, Average = 25ms

I also have the Cloudflare IPv6 DNS set on my PC too. I didn't put v6 custom DNS on the T3200.

 

One thing you could try is disabling IPv6 on your devices or T3200 itself and try pinging again.


If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Like" or mark as an accepted solution if it solves your trouble. 🙂

Thanks for all the detail and problem solved 🙂

 

Gateway was set to IPv6 , temporarily turning it off solved the problem. I have IPv6 enabled everywhere else as well (the android device, cloudflare also set for IPv6.

 

I have three I don't knows I'll take away for further on my own, unless you care to reply with a brief comment. If not no wories, you've been very helpful and a kudos is coming.

 

1. Were gateway IPv6 settings were enabled ore disabled by default?

2. Read wikipedia page on IPv4 and IPv6 (prob more than enough details for a networking neophyte)

3. . What are the the benefits and drawbacks in using one or the other (4 vs. 6) depending on circumstances?

 

Nighthawk
Community Power User
Community Power User

IPv6 is usually enabled by default. For some DSL connections on old hardware or remote areas, IPv6 wasn't initially available. For me I had the default IPv6 DNS on the T3200 but Cloudflare IPv6 DNS on my PC. 

 

You're probably going to benefit most by having BOTH v4 and v6 enabled. v4 has been the main one in use for ages. v6 is still not everywhere yet but getting more common. The move to v6 came about because the available IP addresses for v4 were running out. In home networks are still IPv4 based typically.


If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Like" or mark as an accepted solution if it solves your trouble. 🙂