I used to use ping comcast.net or ping comcast.com to test my
internet connection but now comcast refuses it. It was
confusing a few months ago that comcast.net was showing
a 100% packet loss when the internet was actually reconnected.
Got to now ping a different website.

Comcast is getting really stingy with their bandwidth if they
don't want to send 56 bytes to return a ping.

On Sun, 10 Apr 2022 16:06:21 -0700, weary flake wrote:
> I used to use ping comcast.net or ping comcast.com to test my
> internet connection but now comcast refuses it. It was
> confusing a few months ago that comcast.net was showing
> a 100% packet loss when the internet was actually reconnected.
> Got to now ping a different website.
>
> Comcast is getting really stingy with their bandwidth if they
> don't want to send 56 bytes to return a ping.

If you're a sensible fella and using linux:

$ mtr -c 3 comcsat.net
$ mtr -c 3 comcsat.com

$ man mtr

Jonesy
--
Marvin L Jones | Marvin | W3DHJ.net | linux
38.238N 104.547W | @ jonz.net | Jonesy | FreeBSD
* Killfiling google & XXXXbanter.com: jonz.net/ng.htm

On Sun, 10 Apr 2022 16:06:21 -0700, weary flake <wearyflake@gmail.com>
wrote:

>I used to use ping comcast.net or ping comcast.com to test my
>internet connection but now comcast refuses it. It was
>confusing a few months ago that comcast.net was showing
>a 100% packet loss when the internet was actually reconnected.
>Got to now ping a different website.
>
>Comcast is getting really stingy with their bandwidth if they
>don't want to send 56 bytes to return a ping.

Instead of pinging the domain(s), try pinging something more specific:

ping www.comcast.net
ping www.comcast.com

Or, like you said, just ping another site. Google works fine.

weary flake wrote:

> I used to use ping comcast.net or ping comcast.com to test my
> internet connection but now comcast refuses it. It was
> confusing a few months ago that comcast.net was showing
> a 100% packet loss when the internet was actually reconnected.
> Got to now ping a different website.
>
> Comcast is getting really stingy with their bandwidth if they
> don't want to send 56 bytes to return a ping.

Pinging www.comcast.net and www.xfinity.com works okay for me.
Everything changes, and many things require maintenance during which
their behavior is curtailed or altered. Could be you chose the wrong
time to ping Comcast. How long did you wait to try again? Also, you're
assuming their nameserver automatically redirects to a "www" host when
no host is specified. Next time use a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain
Name), like www.comcast.net. Don't leave out hostnames thinking
everywhere defaults to using "www" to a web server. Some sites will
direct you to different pages if you use domain.tld versus
hostname.domain.tld. I've see where domain.tld did not redirect to
www.domain.tld. You assuming every site defaults to using a www named
host is wrong. It's just what lots of users have become accustomed as
the default.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_qualified_domain_name

You cannot connect to a domain. You can only connect to a *host* at the
domain. For more users, that would be the "www" host, but not always,
and not all domains use "www" as their default host. For some, not
specifying a host, like omitting www, means you don't connect as they
don't redirect non-hosted connects to their www host.

I've never used Comcast to do a ping to check Internet connectivity. I
usually ping www.intel.com, www.yahoo.com, or www.microsoft.com to not
only make sure that I have network connectivity out of my intranet into
Comcast's network, but also *outside* of Comcast's network. I've
encountered where I could reach Comcast hosts, but not hosts outside of
Comcast's network. I rarely visit any Comcast site, so I'm far more
interested in getting through Comcast to some other site. Pinging
through Comcast to some non-Comcast site better indicates if you're
getting outside of your intranet to Comcast and outside of Comcast.

If a site disabled ping, it has nothing to do with saving on bandwidth.
Many sites don't like their network mapped by outsiders. They might
allow ICMP on their boundary host, but not inside, and why you get a
bunch of failed pings until it gets outside their network to go
elsewhere. Also, responding to pings requires consuming their
resources, and they may decide their resources are put to better use
with other protocols. Bandwidth is trivial, but making a server
acknowledge and establish a connection request, and then spending the
CPU cycles to response are not trivial if hundreds of thousands of pings
are hitting a server. Pings are also used in DDOS attacks. That's
because server resources get consumed for those connection requests.

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ddos/ping-icmp-flood-ddos-attack/

On Sun, 10 Apr 2022 22:06:53 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
> weary flake wrote:
>
>> I used to use ping comcast.net or ping comcast.com to test my
>> internet connection but now comcast refuses it. It was
>> confusing a few months ago that comcast.net was showing
>> a 100% packet loss when the internet was actually reconnected.
>> Got to now ping a different website.
>>
>> Comcast is getting really stingy with their bandwidth if they
>> don't want to send 56 bytes to return a ping.
>
> Pinging www.comcast.net and www.xfinity.com works okay for me.

Interesting. From what you typed I tested again here.

|$ ping www.comcast.net
|PING e7010.dscg.akamaiedge.net (23.211.41.52) 56(84) bytes of data.
|64 bytes from a23-211-41-52.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (23.211.41.52): icmp_seq=1 ttl=50 time=26.0 ms
|64 bytes from a23-211-41-52.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (23.211.41.52): icmp_seq=2 ttl=50 time=26.5 ms
|64 bytes from a23-211-41-52.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (23.211.41.52): icmp_seq=3 ttl=50 time=26.9 ms
| |--- e7010.dscg.akamaiedge.net ping statistics ---
|3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms
|rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 26.072/26.516/26.953/0.359 ms

|$ ping comcast.net
|PING comcast.net (96.99.227.0) 56(84) bytes of data.
| |--- comcast.net ping statistics ---
|3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 1999ms

So, yes, the "www" distinction is necessary.
Jonesy
--
Marvin L Jones | Marvin | W3DHJ.net | linux
38.238N 104.547W | @ jonz.net | Jonesy | FreeBSD
* Killfiling google & XXXXbanter.com: jonz.net/ng.htm

Allodoxaphobia wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Apr 2022 22:06:53 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
>> weary flake wrote:
>>
>>> I used to use ping comcast.net or ping comcast.com to test my
>>> internet connection but now comcast refuses it. It was
>>> confusing a few months ago that comcast.net was showing
>>> a 100% packet loss when the internet was actually reconnected.
>>> Got to now ping a different website.
>>>
>>> Comcast is getting really stingy with their bandwidth if they
>>> don't want to send 56 bytes to return a ping.
>>
>> Pinging www.comcast.net and www.xfinity.com works okay for me.
>
> Interesting. From what you typed I tested again here.
>
>|$ ping www.comcast.net
>|PING e7010.dscg.akamaiedge.net (23.211.41.52) 56(84) bytes of data.
>|64 bytes from a23-211-41-52.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (23.211.41.52): icmp_seq=1 ttl=50 time=26.0 ms
>|64 bytes from a23-211-41-52.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (23.211.41.52): icmp_seq=2 ttl=50 time=26.5 ms
>|64 bytes from a23-211-41-52.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (23.211.41.52): icmp_seq=3 ttl=50 time=26.9 ms
>|
>|--- e7010.dscg.akamaiedge.net ping statistics ---
>|3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms
>|rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 26.072/26.516/26.953/0.359 ms
>
>|$ ping comcast.net
>|PING comcast.net (96.99.227.0) 56(84) bytes of data.
>|
>|--- comcast.net ping statistics ---
>|3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 1999ms
>
> So, yes, the "www" distinction is necessary.

nslookup comcast.net
returns
96.99.227.0

nslookup www.comcast.net
returns
2600:1418:c000:381::1b62
2600:1418:c000:397::1b62
104.68.211.200

So, different hosts are hit based on which URL is used. In fact, your
ping data shows different hosts are getting hit. Perhaps when their
boundary host gets hit with an HTTP connect request, like when using a
web browser, it redirects to the www host, but doesn't do the same when
some other protocol is used for a connection.

On 4/10/22 7:02 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
> On Sun, 10 Apr 2022 16:06:21 -0700, weary flake <wearyflake@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I used to use ping comcast.net or ping comcast.com to test my
>> internet connection but now comcast refuses it. It was
>> confusing a few months ago that comcast.net was showing
>> a 100% packet loss when the internet was actually reconnected.
>> Got to now ping a different website.
>>
>> Comcast is getting really stingy with their bandwidth if they
>> don't want to send 56 bytes to return a ping.
>
> Instead of pinging the domain(s), try pinging something more specific:
>
> ping www.comcast.net
> ping www.comcast.com
>
> Or, like you said, just ping another site. Google works fine.
>

That works. It's different now, but used to not require the
prefix "www."