Question for you computer gurus out there.

Mere Mortal

Mere Mortal

Joined
Dec 26, 2002
Messages
222
The last few days I have been unable to get onto a website. I thought the site was down but it turns out that it is not. I've tried with 3 different computers, all 3 have IE7 and 2 have Firefox 3.6, no browser worked and I get either unable to connect or time out errors. I can get on it using an anonymous browser though.

I've tried shutting the modem, router, and computer down and restarting. I've taken the router out of the equation and only had the computer and modem connected. The only thing that works is the anonymous browser mentioned before.

What could the problem be?
 
You may also try cleaning out the Cache and/or the cookies. is there a security block of some kind on said PC? I know I had a customer that couldn't get on my site because the security function was showing my site as a "Weapons" site and blocked it.
 
Who is your provider ? Your best bet would be to call them and have them 'dial in' to your modem , your modem might have a problem.


Tostig
 
Tostig said:
Who is your provider ? Your best bet would be to call them and have them 'dial in' to your modem , your modem might have a problem.


Tostig
Click to expand...

My guess.

What is this other browser that worked?

Was it only one site? Perhaps it was down or had an issue.
 
Any chance this site doesn't want you connecting? They could be blocking your IP, but the anonymous browser is blocking them from being able to determine your IP, so they can't tell it's you.
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

I tried cleaning the cache and cookies and still the same thing.

I switched to Time Warner about a month ago. I'll be calling them to ask them about this.(Thanks Tostig, I actually didn't think about calling the provider.)

The anonymous browser I used was IIRC anonymouse.org. For some reason I can get on there from their site but not directly on Firefox.

I guess right now I'm frustrated because I can't figure this out.

Edit:
I can't see a reason for them wanting to block my IP, I suppose that is a possibility. Would the error report show that I'm blocked vs. something else?
 
remmmm said:
Any chance this site doesn't want you connecting? They could be blocking your IP, but the anonymous browser is blocking them from being able to determine your IP, so they can't tell it's you.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why a site would spontaniously block someone.

Another thing to consider is if your ISP is blocking / having problems with the site. By using that proxy (that's what it is) it's actually not going through your ISP to reach the site but instead it's going You - ISP - Proxy - Website.
 
depending on the site, some will block a range of IPs because of the infractions of one person (used to happen with deviantart a lot) or the server has blocked an IP address due to an attack from that address, but it was spoofed, or reassigned to you. could also be something going on in one of the intermediate servers. who knows.
 
remmmm said:
Any chance this site doesn't want you connecting? They could be blocking your IP, but the anonymous browser is blocking them from being able to determine your IP, so they can't tell it's you.
Click to expand...

Also, the site might be blocking your access based on identification criteria other than your IP - but in any event, a proxy server would generally allow access because it's preventing the site from identifying "you".

______________________


Access Control

Authentication by username and password is only part of the story. Frequently you want to let people in based on something other than who they are. Something such as where they are coming from. Restricting access based on something other than the identity of the user is generally referred to as Access Control.

Allow and Deny

The Allow and Deny directives let you allow and deny access based on the host name, or host address, of the machine requesting a document. The directive goes hand-in-hand with these is the Order directive, which tells Apache in which order to apply the filters.

The usage of these directives is:

allow from address
where address is an IP address (or a partial IP address) or a fully qualified domain name (or a partial domain name); you may provide multiple addresses or domain names, if desired.

For example, if you have someone spamming your message board, and you want to keep them out, you could do the following:

deny from 11.22.33.44
Visitors coming from that address will not be able to see the content behind this directive. If, instead, you have a machine name, rather than an IP address, you can use that.

deny from hostname.example.com
And, if you'd like to block access from an entire domain, or even from an entire tld (top level domain, such as .com or .gov) you can specify just part of an address or domain name:

deny from 192.101.205
deny from exampleone.com exampletwo.com
deny from tld

From: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/auth.html
 
rifon2 said:
Also, the site might be blocking your access based on identification criteria other than your IP - but in any event, a proxy server would generally allow access because it's preventing the site from identifying "you".

______________________


Access Control

Authentication by username and password is only part of the story. Frequently you want to let people in based on something other than who they are. Something such as where they are coming from. Restricting access based on something other than the identity of the user is generally referred to as Access Control.

Allow and Deny

The Allow and Deny directives let you allow and deny access based on the host name, or host address, of the machine requesting a document. The directive goes hand-in-hand with these is the Order directive, which tells Apache in which order to apply the filters.

The usage of these directives is:

allow from address
where address is an IP address (or a partial IP address) or a fully qualified domain name (or a partial domain name); you may provide multiple addresses or domain names, if desired.

For example, if you have someone spamming your message board, and you want to keep them out, you could do the following:

deny from 11.22.33.44
Visitors coming from that address will not be able to see the content behind this directive. If, instead, you have a machine name, rather than an IP address, you can use that.

deny from hostname.example.com
And, if you'd like to block access from an entire domain, or even from an entire tld (top level domain, such as .com or .gov) you can specify just part of an address or domain name:

deny from 192.101.205
deny from exampleone.com exampletwo.com
deny from tld
Click to expand...

That's just information about a .htaccess / .htpasswd file.
 
deleted post - (see following posts for info if interested)
 
Last edited:
rifon2 said:
Right.

I was editing my post to provide a better example, but you read it and quoted me as I was doing so. :cool:

So I'll just let it stand.

Because the point is made in the post - the site attempting to be accessed can be blocking access based on criteria other than the user's IP address.
Click to expand...

Yes, but this is access control. It's irrelevent if he can't even get to the site. Denying will cause an error to be displayed like a 403 Forbidden or 302 Redirect. If he can't even load the site then the problem is either with the ISP or a router along the way. It could even be bad DNS information if the site moved servers.

Whatever it is, it's not Apache access control.
 
Josh K said:
Yes, but this is access control. It's irrelevent if he can't even get to the site. Denying will cause an error to be displayed like a 403 Forbidden or 302 Redirect. If he can't even load the site then the problem is either with the ISP or a router along the way. It could even be bad DNS information if the site moved servers.

Whatever it is, it's not Apache access control.
Click to expand...

Josh, I re-read the OP and see that you're correct - he's not being denied access, he's not even getting that far.
 
I figure I'm not banned or blocked from them since I logged into my account from my cell phone just to see what would happen. I flushed my DNS and renewed my IP and still didn't work.

I can ping the site with 4 packets sent and 4 received with 0 lost. When I run a trace route it time outs while it is still in my providers servers. So I contacted my ISP, and they sent me to the 3rd level of tech support and they are unsure of what is wrong.

They're working on finding out why and they are suppose to get back to me with an answer. I'll update to why it happens.
 
I had a similar problem (I'm with AOL in the UK) so I registered for free with opendns.com and changed to their DNS servers in my router settings and everything was fixed.

OpenDNS has a good reputation and as far as I know and in my experience can be trusted.
 
They called me back and it was an error on my ISP's end. They aren't to sure what happened but from what I was told all requests to that site on their servers were re-routed to a commercial server when it should not have been. They fixed the issue.

Thanks for the help everybody.
 
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