Re:Belkin Breaks Its Routers Worldwide, Issues Temporary Fix
by mzs on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @10:33AM
(#8427054)
Nah, this is the best explanation from a reddit thread, looks like it was pinging heartbeat.belkin.com to verify network connectivity after getting DNS servers from DHCP:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2ik43h/belkin_fi...
10:40 AM <Duiwel> Just got an e-mail from someone on our Wireless ISP mailing list: We found the routers are sending icmp to heartbeat.belkin.com. Even though we could get a response here at our NOC, the belkins are not receiving it. We added the ip for heartbeat.belkin.com as a loopback address on a router on our network and it becomes
10:40 AM <Duiwel> reachable to all the belkins on our network. Lo, and Behold! They all work again.
10:40 AM <Duiwel> May have to try that
Re:Belkin Breaks Its Routers Worldwide, Issues Temporary Fix
by nandhp on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @10:39AM
(#8427077)
My theory has been that if "the Internet is down" (ping failure to heartbeat.belkin.com) the router does DNS hijacking to show the user a diagnostic page. However, I haven't found a description of what the problem looks like from the Belkin-user's end, so I have no evidence to back that up.
Re:Belkin Breaks Its Routers Worldwide, Issues Temporary Fix
by roywiggins on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @10:33AM
(#8427055)
That's a bit freaky. I more-or-less expect my ISP to see all my DNS queries, but not my router manufacturer.
Evidence is the "workaround" posted on their status page:
"We have identified a workaround that will enable some users to get back online. The workaround requires that you set a static DNS address on the device trying to access the internet."