12-24-2005, 11:59 PM
Some things to try if your ISP cannot or will not help:
Check that the hostname can be resolved. Do 'ping name' in a command prompt. If it comes back with "Pinging name [x.x.x.x] with 32 bytes of data:", then the name was resolved. Next, does the site actually respond to the pings? Some sites filter ICMP echo request, so you won't get a response even when the site is working correctly. If the name was not resolved, you've got bigger problems. Post back stating that because the rest of this response is irrelevant if you can't resolve the names. :) Try connecting to the site manually, by doing 'telnet name 80' at the command prompt. If telnet connects successfully (this may be hard to tell since the Microsoft telnet client sucks for this stuff), the site is answering, but your browsers are unable to negotiate with it. If telnet comes back that the connection was refused or timed out, then you cannot connect (obviously). If the connection is refused, that's an indication that your request was actively rejected -- the remote site refused to permit your connection, or an intermediate host killed it. If the connection times out, you're not getting responses back from the remote site at all.
You can also try running a traceroute session (unfortunately misnamed 'tracert' under Microsoft Windows). Just 'tracert name', and watch the results. If it works, it will print out the path between your system and the remote site, resolving hosts as it goes. This may take several minutes if there are many firewalled hosts in the path, or it might never reach the site. In any case, I'd strongly suggest posting here with the output of any commands you run (if you don't mind us knowing the names of the sites involved). You can copy the commands from the prompt by right-clicking, choosing Mark, then highlighting the text you want. Right-click, choose copy, and the text is moved to the Windows clipboard so that you can paste it here.
Check that the hostname can be resolved. Do 'ping name' in a command prompt. If it comes back with "Pinging name [x.x.x.x] with 32 bytes of data:", then the name was resolved. Next, does the site actually respond to the pings? Some sites filter ICMP echo request, so you won't get a response even when the site is working correctly. If the name was not resolved, you've got bigger problems. Post back stating that because the rest of this response is irrelevant if you can't resolve the names. :) Try connecting to the site manually, by doing 'telnet name 80' at the command prompt. If telnet connects successfully (this may be hard to tell since the Microsoft telnet client sucks for this stuff), the site is answering, but your browsers are unable to negotiate with it. If telnet comes back that the connection was refused or timed out, then you cannot connect (obviously). If the connection is refused, that's an indication that your request was actively rejected -- the remote site refused to permit your connection, or an intermediate host killed it. If the connection times out, you're not getting responses back from the remote site at all.
You can also try running a traceroute session (unfortunately misnamed 'tracert' under Microsoft Windows). Just 'tracert name', and watch the results. If it works, it will print out the path between your system and the remote site, resolving hosts as it goes. This may take several minutes if there are many firewalled hosts in the path, or it might never reach the site. In any case, I'd strongly suggest posting here with the output of any commands you run (if you don't mind us knowing the names of the sites involved). You can copy the commands from the prompt by right-clicking, choosing Mark, then highlighting the text you want. Right-click, choose copy, and the text is moved to the Windows clipboard so that you can paste it here.