How can I find the name/who owns a router ?

How can I find the name/who owns a router with an IP address of 130.81.10.94.

I try to access my email and the hops go through a Verizon router and get to 130.81.10.94 and time out.

 

The IP address is owned by Verizon, using the DNS services of an old Bell Atlantic server. It seems to be sitting right next to a DSL aggregator in Verizon's Tampa center (P3-2.LCR-02.TAMPFL.verizon-gni.net) as last stop before a Qwest edge router (dcx-edge-02.inet.qwest.net), and as fourth-to-last stop before spilling out onto AlterNet's backbone (0.so-0-1-0.BR1.DCA5.ALTER.NET).

I'd say Verizon owns it, and that it's sitting in Tampa.

Has it ever worked? I mean, are you just now setting-up your email and you can't get it to work; or has it been working just fine and now, all of a sudden and without you having changed any settings, it has just stopped?

And I take it you're a Verizon DSL customer, no? If so, were you a Verizon dial-up customer before that and have you just now upgraded to Verizon DSL? If so, and if you're using the exact same settings in your email software on DSL that you used when you were a dialup customer, that could be the problem.

A call to Verizon customer support seems in order.

Also, I will point out that something seems wrong with the responsiveness of that device. Pings, at this writing, from out here in California, are taking in the area of 3,000 ms -- an eternity, by Internet standards. Should be 50 ms to maybe 200 ms. So it's more than 10 times typical... which is timeout territory. It may be hanging or looping and merely needs to be reset; or maybe it's toast. I'm surprised it hasn't alarmed at Verizon's tech center (or maybe it has and the onsite tech is, as you're reading this, mounting a replacement). There should also be alternate routing in a place as big as Verizon. I'm surprised this is happening.

Then again, Verizon is just good ol' GTE with a shiny, new name.

 

I just did some deeper digging. Seems this device at Verizon's Tampa center using IP 130.81.10.94 has been an ongoing problem for DSL and other broadband customers.

You may need to wait 'til Monday morning and then call Verizon and insist on speaking with a supervisor and demanding to know why this device has such a high latency that it's timing-out pretty much everything that tries to go through it; why it's been that way for so long; and why Verizon either can't or won't fix it; and, finally, precisely what it is you're supposed to do about it.

Sadly, since Verizon is formerly GTE; and since GTE was the CLEC that owns the physical infrastructure for that area, even if you used a competitor's DSL product, you might still be routed through that same device on the way out to the AlterNet backbone.

This is, I'm afraid, going to be a bigger deal for you than I had hoped. Sorry.

 

Okay... I got it now. The device at 130.81.10.94 is a border peer router... which explains why it's sitting right next to QWEST's edge router there in Tampa. But devices using that IP can also sit in other data centers -- including at Verizon in Reston, VA. This is because a peer router can share an IP address with other peers in its group located in other locations... even in other cities or other countries. That means that my earlier PINGs are invalid for your location. Disregard them. I was hasty in posting and should have done deeper digging before I did so. My bad.

In a peer group, one router in the group -- maybe not even in the same city as the one that's giving you trouble -- can screw-up everything. To my way of thinking, it's a stupid way to design things from a functionality standpoint -- precisely because of the things that are now happening to you -- but it makes troubleshooting the network for Verizon easier... especially when there are DOS attacks going on, or when traffic gets really heavy in any particular data center. The increase in DOS attacks and the fluctuations in bandwidth usage that broadband telephony and increased use of the web for streaming and gaming is forcing ISPs and backbone providers to go with the peer router strategy as part of what's called a Data Link Switching Plus (DLSw+) scheme. From the Cisco web site:

• "...peer groups and border peers can be used to provide any-to-any connectivity in large networks, with peer-on-demand. DLSw+ provides a hierarchical means to dynamically search for branch resources. Instead of a single branch router having to query every other branch router, the branch router sends a single broadcast to its border peer. The border peer checks its local, remote, and group cache before it forwards the explorer. If the resource is not found, the border peer propagates the broadcast within its group and to other border peers. Other border peers propagate the broadcast within their group. This method not only minimizes the broadcast replication on each line, it also minimizes the replication work done by any single router. End-to-end TCP connections (called peer-on-demand connections) are set up only when resources are found. DLSw+ border peer was introduced in Cisco IOS® Software Release 10.3."

This is a problem that will likely clear itself. But it remains a problem about which many Verizon customers have been complaining over time. Therefore, you should probably still register your complaint with Verizon support so they can see that it's still going on... at least for you.

 

First, thank you.
Second, how did you find this info? I tried a “WhoIs” but that would not work because I only had the IP address.
Third, thank you.

Here is my situation:
I had BellSouth in NE Florida and move to the Tampa area and had to switch to Verizon. I was never able to get attachment on my Hotmail account since (3 months). I called tech support and was told that Verizon supplies the tunnel to the internet and what happens after that has nothing to do with them….bullshit!

I called back and the next person I spoke to was about to say the same. I told them that a Tracert shows the packet getting to a Verizon router and stopping at 130.81.10.94. Then they said it is a Hotmail problem. I told them that they are responsible for the infrastructure that gets me to the Hotmail router. They said 130.81.10.94 is owned by Hotmail so it out of their hands.

We also went back and forth about other stuff like if you can forward the email it must be a Hotmail problem….blah.blah.blah. I explained that I never had this problem with BellSouth and it started the exact day that I switch to Verizon. You will never guess what the response was…”it must be a coincidence.”

I told them that I would have to switch to another carrier because they would not see my point. I was finally told to go to Yahoo and search for “can not open hotmail attachments” or something like that. I was told to read all the posting about people having problems with Hotmail. I was also told that if there was a problem with their router, more people would be complaining.

Lastly, I was told to go to www.verizon.net/betterway and download the updates. Now I can open my attachment. Verizon sucks!

By the way, thanks again and could you please tell me where you got the info so I can call them back and waste a few more hours of my life.

 

I spoke too soon. It is not working again. I hate Verizon!!!!

 

How I got all the information I used is too complicated to explain here. It's from multiple sources using multiple tools that I have in my little bag-o-tricks. It's not magic, mind you; and it's not anything that tons of other IT people have, too. I'm just saying that I don't want to give a seminar, here, on hunting-down a specific device 3,000 miles away from me across the vastness of the Internet. That said, I'll at least tell you this much: When you do a WHOIS on an IP address, you can't use the same WHOIS servers that you use for a domain name. For IP addresses, you need to interrogate the ARIN database. If you don't have desktop tool that will do it, as I do, you can do it on the web at whois.arin.net. But that will only give you your starting point.

I grew-up in Gary, Indiana, which is almost closer to downtown Chicago than most of Chicago's Western suburbs, hence though the rest of Indiana was on the Eastern time zone, Northwest Indiana was on Central, with Chicago. And our TV and readio stations came out of Chicago. And for years -- way before Judge Green busted-up the phone companies, we were Illinois Bell customers, even though we were in Indiana.

Just to the East was Porter county... GTE territory. Years after those of us un Bell territory had switch to true DTMF (touch tone dialing) switches, GTE in Porter country was still converting DTMF to pulse (rotary) dialing. You could hear the pulsing before the connection was made. Even after GTE finally started getting caught up with what was, by then, Indiana Bell (Indiana Bell eventually took-over the Indiana areas that Illinois bell had serviced), there were still tons of features that Bell customers in Lake County could get, but GTE customers in Porter country couldn't get. It stayed like that for a long time. Even when I finally left Gary for other parts of Indiana, GTE was light years behind.

Even when I spend a few years mostly in Tampa (had a little house on Davis Island) working on a long-term project, the GTE telephone service was less than stellar. My cousin is an exec for GTE (wll, now Verizon), nearing retirement working out of the Tampa office, and even he often shook his head in disbelief over GTE silliness. The Verizon merger just adds huge-company-bureaucracy to an already dysfunctional situation.

You've moved from an old "Ma Bell" territory (where they actually kinda' know what they're doing) into GTE (aka Verizon) service-from-hell territory, where they don't. Trust me, it's not going to get much better. High-tech (and, really, DSL isn't even that high tech anymore) and GTE (aka Verizon) in Tampa are like oil and water. The term "customer support" there is an oxymoron.

Honestly, you might be better off getting a cable modem. If I recall correctly it's Road Runner service in your neck of the woods (if that's what they still call it). I know that works okay. You might want to look into it. But, then again, that's like when a Windows lightweight can't figure out what's wrong and just gives up and wipes the hard drive clean and re-installs, so I guess maybe that's cowardly advice.

No surprise there.

I can probably help you, but this is one of those rare times when it makes little sense to do it here.

Either send me an email through this forum, or a PM with your email address or something and let's see if we can get to the bottom of it. If nothing else, I can help you word your complaint to Verizon in such a way that they can't just blow you off and will take you seriously.