IP Address Reversed

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

All,

I have a very strange problem with one of my customers who uses Avast Internet Security on 2 machines (Desktop & Laptop).

They use Virgin email via outlook (pop.virgin.net & smtp.virgin.net - setup using SSL).

In the last 2 weeks they have problems receiving and sending emails (intermittent).
When I am looking on their machines and do a ping to either pop.virgin.net or smtp.virgin.net I see it tries to ping 201.26.254.62 for pop.virgin.net and 209.26.254.62 for smtp.virgin.net. And they do not resolve and do not get a ping back.

If you do a ping yourself you will see that the IP addresses the machines try to ping are in reverse of what they actually need to be.
pop.virgin.net - 62.254.26.201
smtp.virgin.net - 62.254.26.209

Initially I thought it might be something to do with their ISP’s DNS and changed the DNS Settings on their router to OpenDNS. This did not resolve the problem.

They I uninstalled Avast, Rebooted and tried to Ping again. This time no problem.
Installed Avast again and reboot. Ping still works.
A day later, it does not work or works very intermittent with the same problem.

As they are using an SSL Connection to pop and secure connection to smtp, I did put in the details in Avast (Email Security) to tell it about this.

Does anybody have any idea what is happening and why? And does anybody know how I can resolve this permanently?

Thanks,
Raoul.

2

Well the avast IP information is correct for virgin.net IP range, image1.

But the users ping IP seems to be completely wrong, image2 and I don’'t believe avast Internet Security controls the ping function.

I am using the avast free version (so no avast firewall but I don’t believe that would make a difference) and a ping on pop.virgin.net brings up the correct IP, image3, weird.

3

DavidR,

Thank you for the response.
I am also suprised about this and find it weird. But what seems to be really strange is that after removing Avast the ping seems to work.

I will continue my investigation in this.

Raoul.

4

I think that this is more likely to have been an issue with a dns server, otherwise it would be in a consistent state if avast were installed.

The only time avast uses its own (or specific dns server) is when using the SafeZone and I guess you/they weren’t trying to ping from within the safezone.

I think what really needs investigating are the intermittent problems (e.g. full error messages, etc.) as if there was an issue with the ISP’s dns server and pop.virgin.net then presumably that would also reflect in the ability to send and receive email to that IP.

I have one email account from my old ISP Tesco and that email is handled by virginmedia.net email servers; I didn’t know that until it appeared in the avast SSL Accounts section and not Tesco.net. There is no Tesco entry in my SSL Accounts and only virginmedia.net, yet that works just fine.

You could also try setting their DNS server to that of OpenDNS.

5

Hi,
it is truly interesting. So what does smtp.virgin.net and pop.virgin.net resolve on their machines? Does it also resolve to the reversed ip address?


nslookup smtp.virgin.net

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    smtp.virgin.net
Address:  62.254.26.209


nslookup pop.virgin.net

Name:    pop.virgin.net
Address:  62.254.26.201
6

Lukor,

Yes, it showed the reverse IP address as mentioned in the original post.

But I think we have solved the problem. It was not Avast, but it was their DSL Router.
I have now replaced the DSL Router with a Netgear N300.

The previous one was a Belkin F5D8636-4 v2 router (only 2 months old).
I must say, I am getting less impressed with Belkin.

7

I’ll agree with that. Might there have been a firmware update for it though? http://en-au-support.belkin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2594