I have been having problems maintaining an FTP connection to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) that I rent from a hosting company. I have contacted them regarding the problem but they have been unable to help so far.

I can login to various areas using different user logins but when I try to ftp from both linux and window based PCs using my ISP

uploading of files is very slow, sometimes times out before loading any files, sometimes hangs when trying to load a number of small files, listing the directory contents sometimes also times out.

Traceroute/tracert produce the following:

Tracing route to sparkle.veriovps.co.uk [213.198.59.178]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.129.199
2 44 ms 64 ms 10 ms lo99.bhm-0-dsl.as9105.net [212.74.111.242]
3 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms ge2-2-25.ho-bham0.as9105.net [212.74.106.194]
4 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms pos0-0.glo1.as9105.net [212.74.108.202]
5 13 ms 12 ms 11 ms pos2-0.glo0.as9105.net [212.74.108.166]
6 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms pos0-0.bri1.as9105.net [212.74.108.162]
7 18 ms 60 ms 18 ms ge0-0-0.he-lon0.as9105.net [212.74.109.14]
8 25 ms 17 ms 17 ms ge4-0-0.he-lon1.as9105.net [212.74.106.54]
9 78 ms 76 ms 41 ms ge-6-1-0.lon22.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.78.233]
10 73 ms 62 ms 86 ms xe-0-1-0.ams10.ip.tiscali.net [89.149.186.237]
11 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms ge-1.ams-ix.amstnl02.nl.bb.gin.ntt.net [195.69.144.36]
12 24 ms 24 ms 23 ms xe-0-2-0.r22.amstnl02.nl.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.2.20]

14 82 ms 30 ms 30 ms p16-2-0-0.r00.frnkge02.de.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.3.194]
15 30 ms 31 ms 30 ms ge-1-1.c00.frnkge02.de.wh.verio.net [213.198.52.157]
16 31 ms 30 ms 30 ms 213.198.72.73
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.

30 * * * Request timed out.

Ping shows:

Pinging 213.198.59.178 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 213.198.59.178: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

I have tried this from another PC via a different ISP and have been able to ping and traceroute ok and upload files via command line ftp without any problem. (At line 17 it shows 213.198.59.178 but lines 1 to 14 inclusive show a different route).

When I try to SSH into the VPS server it takes forever to get asked for the login password and collecting emails from the server is also very slow.

Could the hosting company have a firewall that is blocking the IP address allocated by my ISP or could this problem be caused by something else?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Don't know if this is related to your problem, but once in a while, I have trouble with the same thing on my work machines. Slow to connect to FTP, directory listing often doesn't work, and even if I get the transfer started, it will halt after only a short time.

Every time I have this issue, it is because someone on the network is setting their IP staticly and the DHCP server is not good at picking this up...so someone else has the same IP I do.

Sounds like a long shot to me, but I don't know how your ISP handles their IPs. Personally, I think it is worth checking out (I always tested this by having another system ping that IP after I've disconnected it).