Starting on about 3/10/15 I noticed that I was unable to login to Sony’s Playstation Network on either my PS4, PS Vita, or even in a web browser by going to playstation.com and clicking “Sign In”.

I contacted Sony about this issue since all other internet traffic worked correctly, including other gaming networks like Xbox Live and Nintendo’s Network. It was clear that Sony “technicians” had no idea what was going on. They provided zero real information beyond emailing me a list of network ports to forward on my router, despite that having zero effect on activities happening over port 80 in a web browser. They suggested I call Google.

At this point, I tried connecting via a mobile hotspot (which has a different external address than my home connection) and that worked correctly.

On my own, being someone who is knowledgeable in how computer networks actually work, continued my own troubleshooting. By running tracert, it became apparent that any traffic that was intended for PSN was being routed to a host known as “unknown.prolexic.com [72.52.6.38]”. I went to prolexic.com and noticed that they are a firm (owned by Akamai) that specializes in DDoS mitigation. I put 2 and 2 together and figured they must have flagged me as a “false positive” and rerouted my traffic to Prolexic.

At this point I tried using some alternative DNS solutions such as OpenDNS with no change in behavior.



After a great deal of work with Google to ensure my network was set up correctly with default/recommended settings (and still not being able to connect), I went back to Sony. I asked to have my issue escalated to a higher tier of support or have their network administrators contact Google Fiber (my ISP) about getting this issue resolved. After being told there was no higher tier of service, I demanded to talk to a manager.

The “technician” transferred me to a supervisor and related all the information I had gathered so far. He placed me on hold for several minutes. He had never heard of Prolexic and had no idea about DDoS attacks or really about networking at all. He restated that there was no way I could talk to network administrators or anyone else in Sony support. He then said that there are some internet connections that Sony will not support and that was the end of the call.

I have contacted Prolexic by email with no response.

So, I am currently unable to use the Playstation Network, a service I pay an annual fee to use, and have been given NO recourse from Sony as far as refund or additional support.