topic Pinging Plusnet in Broadband

Pinging Plusnet

redsox9 — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 14:02:28 GMT

I have been experiencing intermittent drop-outs for the last 3 days and have a fault question open. When I am connected and try pinging Plusnet I get the following message: "Pinging ntp.r53-gslb.vision.bt.com [213.123.22.85] with 32 bytes of data". The request then times out.
What does this mean?

Re: Pinging Plusnet

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 14:25:29 GMT

I am assuming you are doing something like -

ping ntp.plus.net

The Plusnet NTP servers were decommissioned in July 2023, and the URL now redirects to the NTP servers at bt.com, in this case specifically <ntp.r53-gslb.vision.bt.com>

If all you are seeing after that is -

"Pinging ntp.r53-gslb.vision.bt.com [213.123.22.85] with 32 bytes of data".

- then it is telling you that you sent a 32 byte ping request, but hasn't had a reply.

There was a discussion about this back in July - Has Plusnet server 212.159.6.9 just gone down ?

the conclusion being that there is nothing that can now reliably be pinged within Plusnet.

If you want an alternative external responsive ping target to 'watchdog' your connection, the the best external targets are -

Level3 DNS = 4.2.2.1

Cloudflare DNS = 1.1.1.1

Re: Pinging Plusnet

redsox9 — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 15:37:50 GMT

Thanks PlanetX. I was not aware that ping ntp.plus.net no longer works. Both of your external targets work marvellously.

Re: Pinging Plusnet

greygit1 — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 22:50:37 GMT

bbc.co.uk also works