Problems connecting

[Obi2Kenobi]

A couple days ago, I was in the middle of browsing a site, when suddenly, I could no longer connect. My requests simply time out. So I try to visit another site, thinking it was down, but this other site also had the same problem. The problem has persisted for nearly 48 hours now.

I do not know why this happenned, and those are the only two sites that do this. The sites are unrelated. One is for a video game, the other is my school's forums. I've spoken with the admin of the video game site, and he doesn't know what's wrong (I'm not blocked, in other words).

I've scanned my computer with Ad-Aware, Spybot, Norton Antivirus, etc., and all came up with nothing. My hosts file has no unusual entries, and I disabled my firewall to no avail. In short, I can't find out why this is happenning. The sites are not down, either. I have checked in both Firefox and IE and get the same problem.

I am using Windows XP Pro. Everything is up-to-date. I am using a Wireless connection. There would be no reason for my ISP to suddenly block both sites from access (I use Qwest DSL), especially since one site is a small private site.

Anyone have any ideas?

If this isn't fixed today, I think I may have to contact my ISP and see what's up.

[Chesspiece_face]

Contact your ISP. There are increasing incidents of ISP's blocking sites that conflict with their own interests. I don't know why quest would block either of the sites you mention, but it sounds suspicious that something is wrong on the ISP's end.

I know MSN has been trying to keep sites like Yahoo Games blocked on thier ISP because they want everyone to use MSN Zone for their gaming needs. And the laws now are leaning to them being able to do this.

[[vL]Kp]

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.

[Obi2Kenobi]

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ping http://www.smogon.com

Pinging http://www.smogon.com [209.59.187.131] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 209.59.187.131:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>telnet http://www.smogon.com 80
Connecting To http://www.smogon.com...Could not open connection to the host, on
port 80: Connect failed

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>tracert smogon.com

1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 10.0.0.1
2 62 ms 60 ms 58 ms 207.225.112.208
3 60 ms 59 ms 58 ms hlrn-agw1.inet.qwest.net [207.225.112.125]
4 61 ms 59 ms 117 ms hlr-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.253.45]
5 80 ms 91 ms 82 ms dal-core-02.inet.qwest.net [67.14.2.10]
6 80 ms 82 ms 80 ms dap-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.225.53]
7 82 ms 82 ms 83 ms qwest-gw.dlstx.ip.att.net [192.205.32.145]
8 102 ms 103 ms 103 ms tbr2-p011801.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.81.194]
9 103 ms 109 ms 102 ms tbr1-cl6.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.10.89]
10 103 ms 103 ms 104 ms 12.122.12.185
11 102 ms 101 ms 100 ms gar3-p300.dtrmi.ip.att.net [12.123.139.54]
12 114 ms 114 ms 107 ms 12.118.112.34
13 105 ms 105 ms 108 ms lw-core2-ge4.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.26]
14 104 ms 103 ms 102 ms lw-dist3-ge2.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157.46]
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
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.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.



/edit: I just checked again, and it seems as though the other site to which I referred was on server 13 of Invisionfree, which is apparently down. So it's just Smogon.

[[vL]Kp]

OK, in order:

You're on the wrong user account. You shouldn't be logged in as Administrator (actually root, but Bill can't even get the name on that right) unless you're doing administrative work on the system.

You shouldn't put a protocol specifier on the hostname passed to ping or telnet. That it works at all is arguably a bug, since you're supposed to feed them hostnames or IP addresses, nor URIs.

Your tracert shows that the datagrams made it out of Qwest and into the network which serves smogon.com. I compared your traceroute to my own (which gets all the way and receives a response from smogon.com), and it looks like your hop #15 would be smogon.com if it had responded. I'm beginning to suspect that you have a personal router at 10.0.0.1 which has blacklisted smogon.com. Try power cycling your router to see if that has any effect. You may need to leave it off for a minute or more to really wipe its mind.

[Obi2Kenobi]

OK, in order:

You're on the wrong user account.  You shouldn't be logged in as Administrator (actually root, but Bill can't even get the name on that right) unless you're doing administrative work on the system.[right][snapback]97998[/snapback][/right]

Yeah, I forgot to make a separate account when I first got this computer... And now I've never gotten around to it.

Other than that, OK. I'll try that. Sorry for being such a newbie with command prompts. ;)

[Jim]

Hi,

I Boot & it goes away...It happens to me once in awhile, I too have Win XP Pro... :D

[Obi2Kenobi]

I wish that worked for me. :(

[Obi2Kenobi]

Sadly, the power cycling did not work. :( Any other ideas?

[[vL]Kp]

Sadly, the power cycling did not work. :( Any other ideas?
[right][snapback]98014[/snapback][/right]

You might have a personal (installed on the system) firewall which has blacklisted that site. I know you previously said that you disabled it, but I don't have much faith in the disable functionality on most of them. Beyond that, I'm out of ideas. If you go to another system in your home, can it reach smogon.com?

[Chesspiece_face]

You might have a personal (installed on the system) firewall which has blacklisted that site.  I know you previously said that you disabled it, but I don't have much faith in the disable functionality on most of them.  Beyond that, I'm out of ideas.  If you go to another system in your home, can it reach smogon.com?
[right][snapback]98017[/snapback][/right]

Windows XP also has built in site blocking in their windows security. you have to go in and add the sites to block to it so i wouldn't think that would be the issue, but it doesn't hurt to look over it and see what is blocked. mostly likely nothing.

[Obi2Kenobi]

By disable, I mean I completely turned it off. No computer in my house can access this site