Conference gyro::internet_toolss

1) Traceroute to it and look at the last step before the destination.
   This will probably show where the connection is.

2) Find out what machines are the secondary DNS servers for the 
   domain, and the secondary mail handlers.  Both these will usually
   be provided by the ISP.

T

	Ok... now I'm really confused.... :-)  If Toyota is at www.toyota.com,
how do I ever get anywhere to decifer the ISP? If it is like the url in my
header, I can trace back to my ISP. 



Glen-dazed-and-confused

|> 	Ok... now I'm really confused.... :-)  If Toyota is at www.toyota.com,
|> how do I ever get anywhere to decifer the ISP? If it is like the url in my
|> header [http://www.ziplink.net/~glen/decplus/], I can trace back to my ISP. 

In general, there is no relation between a name in the DNS (e.g.
www.toyota.com) and the ISP that provides service to it.  There may or
may not be a relation between the IP address (199.94.217.39 in the case
of www.toyota.com) and the ISP; in this instance, network 199.94.217/24
happens to be assigned from 199.92/16, which was originally allocated
to NEARnet and is now part of BBN Planet.

The older the assignment of an IP address is, the less likely it is to
be associated with a particular ISP.  It's only been in the past few
years (with the explosive growth of the net) that - for managing the
sizes of routing tables - it has become important to worry about this
issue.

The URL given as an example can be traced to the operator of the
server, but only coincidentally to the ISP.

--
Ed Gould	  ed@pa.dec.com		Digital Equipment Corporation
+1 415 688 1309	  Network Systems Lab	250 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301
[posted by Notes-News gateway]

    Depending on how you look at it, this is actually a good thing.  Anyone
    can apply for a domain name (e.g., toyota.com), and then have that
    domain assigned to point to a specific place, for example an ISP.  If
    you need to change the ISP at some point, you simply point the domain
    name to the new ISP (this can be handled by the ISP), and the domain
    name seamlessly reroutes traffic to the new site.
    
    For example, when you signed up with your ISP, you were assigned web
    space at http://www.ziplink.net/~glen/ and probably a mail address of
    glen@ziplink.net.  If you change service providers, even if you get the
    same account name, "glen", you'll have to notify everyone of your new
    address, which is partly based on the ISP's name (e.g.,
    glen@ultranet.com).
    
    If you apply to InterNIC for a personal domain name, then that domain
    name can be used to access your pages at your ISP.  If you change ISPs,
    then you just have the domain name point to your new address.  
    
    The cost for this convenience is that it may be hard to determine the
    ISP that is hosting a specific user.
    
    jeb
    

http://www.ziplink.net/~glen/decplus/ (silva@bigq.enet.dec.com) wrote:
: Title: Converting a www.*.com to its ISP

: 	I looked for this and couldn't find it. If someplace has a url (say
: Toyota) www.toyota.com, how does one go about finding the isp it resides on?

Use http://www.research.digital.com/cgi-bin/trace with the "Do report
AS numbers" option (I stripped off the RTTs for readability):

% /usr/local/bin/traceroute -A -h whois.ra.net www.toyota.com
traceroute to www1.toyota.com (199.94.217.39): 1-30 hops, 38 byte
packets
 1  border-gw2.pa-x.dec.com (204.123.2.242) [AS33 - Digital Equipment Corporation]
 2  4.0.2.113 (4.0.2.113) [AS1 - NET-BBNPLANET]
 3  paloalto-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.57) [AS1 - NET-BBNPLANET]
 4  chicago1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.2) [AS1 - NET-BBNPLANET]
 5  chicago1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.194) [AS1 - NET-BBNPLANET]
 6  boston1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.126) [AS1 - NET-BBNPLANET]
 7  boston1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.182) [AS1 - NET-BBNPLANET]
 8  cambridge1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.158) [AS1 - NET-BBNPLANET]
 9  cambridge1-cr2.bbnplanet.net (199.94.205.2) [AS1 - NETBLK-NEARNET-BBN]
10  www1.toyota.com (199.94.217.39) [AS1 - NETBLK-NEARNET-BBN]

Note that for the last hop, 199.94.217.39 is within an address block
whose registered owner is the NEARNET "division" of BBN Planet. The
part within the square brackets is the AS number (AS1 is BBN Planet),
and then the InterNIC handle for the address block, NETBLK-NEARNET-BBN
in this case.

You can issue whois queries to www.ra.net (use the TCP relay
www-ra-net.pa-x.dec.com from within the internal network):

% whois -h whois-ra-net.pa-x.dec.com 199.94.217.39

[...]

route:       199.94.192.0/19
descr:       NETBLK-NEARNET-BBN
descr:       Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
descr:       10 Moulton Street
descr:       Cambridge MA 02138
origin:      AS1
comm-list:   MCI-REFINE
mnt-by:      BBNPLANET
changed:     jhawk@bbnplanet.com 970304
source:      MCI

The registry data is sometimes out of date, but on the whole it's
pretty accurate.

I think some other responses covered this: remember that all this
means is that Toyota's "www.toyota.com" server is connected via BBN
Planet, and is within BBN Planet's address space. Try the whois query:

% whois -h whois-us-nic.pa-x.dec.com toyota

Stephen
--
- -----
Stephen Stuart				stuart@pa.dec.com
Network Systems Laboratory
Digital Equipment Corporation
[posted by Notes-News gateway]

Maybe I'm naive here, but I always thought that the best way to find the ISP was
to use the whois service at rs.internic.net.

That will, at least lead you to the organizations responsible for the domain, and
you can go from there.

gc

crosby@cim2ni.enet.dec.com wrote:
: Title: Converting a www.*.com to its ISP
: Reply Title: WHAT ABOUT INTERNIC?

: Maybe I'm naive here, but I always thought that the best way to find the ISP was
: to use the whois service at rs.internic.net.

: That will, at least lead you to the organizations responsible for the domain, and
: you can go from there.

The whois service at whois.ra.net tells you the registered origin AS
for the address prefix. That gets you much closer to knowing the
identity of the ISP than just knowing to whom the address space is
registered. The registered owner of the domain name is rarely the ISP,
although sometimes some guesses can be made by seeing who provides
name service for the domain.

Stephen
--
- -----
Stephen Stuart				stuart@pa.dec.com
Network Systems Laboratory
Digital Equipment Corporation
[posted by Notes-News gateway]

    One other hitch here is that www.toyota.com could be hosted on a
    totally different site from the rest of toyota.com.
    traceroute to toyota.com (205.180.183.3), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
     1  lowell-is7k.ziplink.net (206.15.158.62)  1.868 ms  1.807 ms  1.672
    ms
     2  zl-cs-lowell-T1.ziplink.net (199.232.244.30)  2.737 ms  1.8 ms 
    1.707 ms
     3  zl-lowell-pru.ziplink.net (199.232.244.53)  4.103 ms  2.846 ms 
    2.707 ms
     4  905.Hssi3-0.GW2.BOS1.ALTER.NET (137.39.135.189)  7.689 ms  4.123 ms 
    4.09 ms
     5  * * *
     6  Hssi3-0.Boston6.MA.Alter.Net (137.39.101.165)  115.625 ms  213.546
    ms  21.486 ms
     7  Fddi1-0.Boston3.MA.Alter.Net (137.39.99.1)  20.152 ms  5.288 ms 
    4.709 ms
     8  Hssi0-0.Cambridge.MA.Alter.Net (137.39.100.98)  14.91 ms  5.32 ms 
    5.782 ms
     9  cambridge2-br1.bbnplanet.net (192.233.33.5)  12.847 ms  4.959 ms 
    5.988 ms
    10  boston1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.185)  7.722 ms  10.318 ms  5.508
    ms
    11  boston1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.181)  433.488 ms  13.304 ms  9.047
    ms
    12  chicago1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.125)  37.304 ms  33.586 ms  32.98
    ms
    13  denver-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.129)  88.907 ms  81.679 ms  85.113
    ms
    14  denver-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.189)  80.94 ms  86.91 ms  82.543 ms
    15  oakland-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.133)  127.604 ms  86.383 ms 
    100.482 ms
    16  oakland-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.78)  85.359 ms  81.258 ms  83.64
    ms
    17  sanjose1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.74)  121.355 ms  111.336 ms 
    132.756 ms
    18  sanjose1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.82)  142.722 ms  84.806 ms 
    85.717 ms
    19  la1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.98)  319.772 ms  91.109 ms  91.526 ms
    20  la1-cr1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.24.5)  95.397 ms  89.6 ms  89.416 ms
    21  toyotamotor.bbnplanet.net (4.0.96.2)  205.27 ms  97.135 ms  97.196
    ms
    22  toyota.toyota.com (205.180.183.3)  97.639 ms *  97.81 ms
    
    In both of these cases, it appears that BBNPlanet is the provider, but,
    many smaller companies may decide to host their web pages on a
    commercial web site.