Interesting problem

[MadMax50]

If anyone here is left on Pipex, especially the xtreme2 realm, I wonder if you could do me a favour.

I have been trying to access a friends web site, www.volvoforumsandmaintenance.co.uk from my office Pipex connection but I cannot get to the site.

Now the interesting bit. I could get to the site this morning and log into it via ftp but half way through an ftp download the connection stopped and I could no longer access the site either through http or ftp. I can get to the site from my mobile phone and from my home connection on Be* but not from our Pipex connection.

I have tried all the usual stuff, reatarted my PC, even though the problem is the same on all our office PC's, powered off the router for 5 minutes,even though I got complaints about the internet being down for that long . There are no firewall rules in place to block this site so that is not the problem.

the site is hosted on eukhost.com who tell me there is no block for anyone wanting to access the site. Pipex tech support says there is no blocking of anything on the Pipex network, like I believe that one . I must admit that the tech guy that I got from Pipex just seemed to not want to deal with my problem and said about 5 times that I should email support for help, now I don't believe that is a good way to get support from Pipex .

If anyone could test the site for me it would be appreciated, and yes there is only a site under constructiion page ATM as I couldn't upload anything to the site today .

Many thanks

[Pengbo]

It sounds an awaful lot like a DNS problem Colin but I am betting you tried the ip-address? I take it you can't ping the domain or the ip-address either?

I like you can get to it no probs as it works from Be*

[MadMax50]

Tried accessing it from the domain name and IP address without any luck.

I got home this afternoon and ftp'd to the site and downloaded everything to my home PC without problems.

An interesting thing was that the guy who owns the site says he also had problems with it yesterday from our office in that he tried uploading a few files and the connection died too.

I'm not normally one for conspiracy theories but this smells like Pipex detecting a group of open connections to the site and seeing it as something they don't like and then blocking the sites IP for a while.

Now the funny thing is that I just tried the site again from my office connection via remote desktop and it works fine now when it didn't just before I left work.

I am going to try the FTP thing again tomorrow, or maybe in a minute, to see if I get blocked again and will report back.


*** edit

Well it seems that it is a Pipex problem after all. I just trried downloading a directory of files from that site to my office PC and 4 files into the download it failed with a connection lost error and the FTP client, WS_FTP, couldn't reconnect. I tried to connect to the web site again and I am completely locked out of the site again from my office connection. Connections from my home connection still works fine and I can download the same directory using the same FTP client without trouble at home.

All other sites work fine from my office so I am definitely getting blocked from the site by something somewhere along the line.

Tracerts from the office PC now get to the hop before the web server and stop there but from home the trace gets all the way to the server and the server responds to pings.

Annoying is a slight understatement fore this problem.

[ceejay13]

More of an FYI...

A similar problem, but a different ISP. Someone I am working with couldn't get through to their bank (www.thecoventry.co.uk) from both their own ADSL connection and through their works connection - both of which are ultimately owned by Carphone Warehouse. This seemed to happen after a sharp degradation in performance of both connections (apparently the result of transfer from the original Opal network to the CW/TalkTalk network).

Change of ISP on the home connection resulted in being able to connect, whereas the works connection still doesn't connect to the problem sites. If I VPN/VNC'd from the duff connection through to my network, all was OK. Tracert always made it to the BT hub in Birmingham - the hop before the connection to the webserver IP.

[MadMax50]

Well, I spent about 45 minutes on the server hosts support chat room last night and I found that I could repeat the problem while I was chatting to the support tech. Once the problem started the support tech told me that my connection was not getting to the server at all when it was just before.

The tech guy was really helpful and tried a load of different things to try to get me access again without success. In the end he said it was definitley Pipex blocking access to the server IP address because I could still access other servers housed in the same place and on the same IP subnet.

I fired of a rather lengthly email to Pipex today which included a tracert to the server before and after I attempted an FTP transfer along with the ftp clients connection log which clearly shows the connection being terminated part way through a transfer.

Now I suppose I just need to play the waiting game and see if they reply. If not then a migration to Be* looks like it will be on the cards .

[ceejay13]

Good Luck!

Don't forget Be* (O2) implement the IWF(?) blacklist very rigorously (or has that policy changed at all).

[MadMax50]

Good Luck!

Don't forget Be* (O2) implement the IWF(?) blacklist very rigorously (or has that policy changed at all).

Not too sure whether things have changed in this respect but their efforts to comply with the IWF haven't effected my browsing so I am sceptical about how much impact the blocking would have on normal internet browsing. I have heard the stories about perfectly legal sites being blocked because of the way Be* have implemented the blocking but it hasn't hit me yet.

Oh, before I forget, Still no response from Pipex about the problem with my friends site being blocked after an attampt at an ftp transfer even after their automatic response says they will contact me within 48 working hours .

Just one other thing that I thought would be nice to mention while I am typing. Over the past couple of weeks I have been getting phone calls from a company called TTE about taking over my companies telephone lines, calls and even internet access. I did tell these nutters that we were not interested in moving our lines away from BT and our calls are already going over a cheap providers network and we are in a 2 year contract with this company.

It was only on the last call that I received today that the rep slipped and told me the real name of the company, they are TalkTalk Enterprises . Needless to say I asked that our company name be taken from their database as we are not interested in dealing with TalkTalk.

I must admit that with them only announcing themselves as TTE it didn't occur to me who they actually were, and with the amount of calls I get from a multitude of different companies with the same requests I would never have guessed it was TalkTalk.

So if any of you start getting calls from TTE then you know just who is actually calling .

[ceejay13]

Thanks for the heads up!

[MadMax50]

Well, I finally got a reply from Pipex about this problem and all it said was

We apologise for the inconvenience. Please call Technical Support Department at 0871-222-5550 for further assistance.

I think I will give up now because I can see this going round and round in circles, tech support say to send an email and the email response says contact tech support .

[ceejay13]

Ahhh, the old Catch 22.

Shame really, but things move on for better or for worse. In this case worse unfortunately.