Has Plusnet server 212.159.6.9 just gone down ?

[#1]

That would make sense that the Plusnet IP was best as there's only 1 router and 1 switch between you and the DNS server, everything else is will be further out on the Internet. www.plus.net responds to ping but is up in Sheffield so a 300+ mile round trip from where the broadband network is so probably further away than any of these as they'll probably all be somewhere in London too.

[#2]

I've just been speed testing Plusnet DNS (212.159.13.51/52) servers using GRC DNS Benchmark and noticed that Level3 DNS servers have very low latency,  so I repeated my 'mtr' ping tests and found that Level3 4.2.2.1 is only 0.2ms slower than Plusnet 212.159.6.10 and has almost no jitter with only 0.7ms difference between fastest to slowest responses over 100 pings.

So I'm changing my pfSense router's WAN monitoring ping target from Cloudflare 1.1.1.1  to  Level3  4.2.2.1

[#3]

Level3 DNS is still looking good as my router's watchdog ping target -

This is pfSense's main control panel view of the IPv4 WAN gateway ping status -

WAN connected to Plusnet gateway 195.166.130.255  with watchdog ping target set to Plusnet DNS server  212.159.6.10

WAN connected to Plusnet gateway 195.166.130.255  with watchdog ping target set to Level3 DNS server  4.2.2.1

Level3 is just 0.3ms slower latency, but has slightly better jitter than Plusnet

😎

[#4]

Seeing as I'm sidetracked into optimising my router's settings for minimum latency and maximum broadband throughput, and now would be a good time to tweak my router's QoS and traffic shapers, could someone at Plusnet (such as @willcutforth) set my Plusnet account "Current Line Speed (Download)" to 71.0Mbps, as the BT Wholesale IP profile has finally updated to a reasonable value, but the corresponding Plusnet profile doesn't ever seem to update to follow BTW IP profile changes.

THANKS !

[#5]

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@Anonymous wrote:

... could someone at Plusnet ... set my Plusnet account "Current Line Speed (Download)" to 71.0Mbps,

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Thanks to @ClaudiaG23 for sorting out my "Current Line Speed".

I'm now back to having good upload and download speeds while simultaneously getting no bufferbloat !

[#6]

Just to confirm 212.159.6.10 has just moved across as well as and also no longer responds to ping.

[#7]

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@bobpullen wrote:

We are mid-migration to a new DNS platform that in the short term will see RADIUS assign two new virtual IP's as part of the PPP negotiation (212.159.13.51/52). These IP's currently point to the new platform.

Do you have the corresponding IPv6 addresses for these two new DNS servers yet ?

so I can add the new numbers to the pool of IPv6 DNS addresses that my router's caching DNS can lookup and use the results from the fastest external DNS resolver.

[#8]

The servers do AAAA lookups over IPv4 such as the one below but we don't have IPv6 resolver IP addresses yet, it's on the to do list though.

$ host community.plus.net 212.159.6.9
Using domain server:
Name: 212.159.6.9
Address: 212.159.6.9#53
Aliases:

community.plus.net is an alias for aptgm87544.lithium.com.
aptgm87544.lithium.com is an alias for d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net.
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has address 18.244.114.49
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has address 18.244.114.7
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has address 18.244.114.34
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has address 18.244.114.78
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has IPv6 address 2600:9000:2550:7600:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has IPv6 address 2600:9000:2550:ee00:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has IPv6 address 2600:9000:2550:d200:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has IPv6 address 2600:9000:2550:ea00:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has IPv6 address 2600:9000:2550:6600:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has IPv6 address 2600:9000:2550:7c00:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has IPv6 address 2600:9000:2550:4000:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1
d14xs8zr41zt1m.cloudfront.net has IPv6 address 2600:9000:2550:2600:1d:4bc7:b280:93a1