SSH - Connection reset by peer - Linux Host

Question

I have a hosting account with Linux shared hosting account with GoDaddy, recently my ssh access stopped working, this is the error:

Toms-MacBook-Pro:production tom$ ssh [email protected] ssh_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer

This happens on my wifi connection however if I create a mobile phone hotspot and connect through my phone's 3g network I can successfully connect with no errors....

I have contacted GoDaddy support various times over the past 2 days and they have not been much help at all, simply put they have said I should just connect through the mobile network!!

After sending a traceroute to them I got this response.

We are tracking instances of connections dropping and being intermittent through Level 3 and their IP 4.34.191.254. I noticed that your connection that is having difficulty is being routed through this path while the connection that did work is not routing through. We are reaching out to Level 3 Communications to see if they can identify and fix this situation. We are seeing more cases like yours pop up from both Europe and the US. In the meantime I would recommend using a connection that does not trace through Level 3 if at all possible.

I'm not sure what means and it staggers me that GoDaddy can not ensure i can connect through my wifi connection !

Any advice, explanation and of course help would be great please guys.

Answer 1

The message indicates an internet connection issue in the Level3 network (i.e. somewhere in between your wifi network/internet provider and the godaddy site). Nothing that either you or godaddy can do to fix it, only Level3 can.

The suggestion is to use an alternate path, which happens when you use the 3G's network provider (instead of your internet provider). By chance I might add - the path between some 3G providers and godadday can still go through Level3's affected network.

Eventually Level3 will fix the issue (large providers usually do that pretty fast) and things will come back to normal.

It's always a good idea to have an alternate provider, your 3G one helped.

BTW: traceroute is the tool to check which path packets go through between your machine and the server you want to reach: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/traceroute.8.html