I’m trying to bring attention to a networking issue I’m experiencing when accessing Twitter from certain networks. I have been told that this issue is Twitter’s problem to address, and have no where else to turn to gain any traction.
Depending on what DNS returns for pbs.twimg.com
, the returned address may not be reachable. This causes attempts to display media to fail.
It’s a networking issue, not related to any particular SDK or mobile app.
From my home ISP, nslookup for pbs.twimg.com
varies in its response. Sometimes, it will return wildcard.twimg.com
and sometimes it will return cs196.wac.edgecastcdn.net
. In the cases where it returns wildcard.twimg.com
, I cannot load media data, or it loads at a glacial pace, and a traceroute fails.
$ nslookup pbs.twimg.com
Server:10.0.1.1
Address:10.0.1.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
pbs.twimg.comcanonical name = wildcard.twimg.com.
Name:wildcard.twimg.com
Address: 104.244.46.135
Wait a few minutes, try again, and nslookup returns
$ nslookup pbs.twimg.com
Server:10.0.1.1
Address:10.0.1.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
pbs.twimg.comcanonical name = cs196.wac.edgecastcdn.net.
cs196.wac.edgecastcdn.netcanonical name = cs2-wac.apr-8315.edgecastdns.net.
cs2-wac.apr-8315.edgecastdns.netcanonical name = cs2-wac-us.8315.ecdns.net.
cs2-wac-us.8315.ecdns.netcanonical name = cs45.wac.edgecastcdn.net.
Name:cs45.wac.edgecastcdn.net
Address: 72.21.91.70
If I get an edgecast CDN address, then things seem to work… That is, until DNS starts returning wildcard.twimg.com
again a few minutes later.
I’ve been through the support channel of my ISP, showed them the traceroute, showed them the nslookup results, once they saw that DNS was returning different addresses they said it was out of their hands.
So apparently Twitter’s CDN is misconfigured for at least a certain segment of users/locations. I work as a software developer and everyone that I work with that uses the same ISP (Cox) as me is experiencing the same excruciatingly slow speed when trying to display Twitter media when connected to Cox.
If i just turn off my WiFi and go to LTE then it’s lightning fast, as it used to be. I never get wildcard.twimg.com
when doing a lookup over that network.
If someone at Twitter could look into this, bring this to the attention of the appropriate party, or point me in the proper direction to escalate it myself, I’d appreciate it.