Server time out, Server not responding ---Totally locked out as of a couple days ago!

[foreveryours]

Mine goes thru the exact same facility in McLean, Virginia

C:\Users\foreveryours> tracert forums.longhaircommunity.com

Tracing route to forums.longhaircommunity.com [104.192.220.152]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 24 ms 13 ms 21 ms 45.86.208.57
3 37 ms 22 ms 21 ms 45.86.208.0
4 16 ms 17 ms 15 ms ae1-12.cr2-phx2.ip4.gtt.net [76.74.43.45]
5 23 ms 25 ms 24 ms ae14.cr5-lax2.ip4.gtt.net [89.149.180.234]
6 24 ms 26 ms 25 ms fe0-pronethosting.cust.lax02.packetexchange.net [216.193.192.162]
7 24 ms 25 ms * longhaircommunity.com [104.192.220.152]
8 24 ms 28 ms 23 ms longhaircommunity.com [104.192.220.152]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\foreveryours>

I give up for now.

[foreveryours]

One other thing, you can check your ip address (use google to find it) to see whether it has been blacklisted by various organizations here

https://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check

Might provide a clue.

Or not.

[lapushka]

Well, foreveryours, obviously, I mean so far (what else is gonna hit us ) it's not my network, or else not me, not anyone on here able to reach the site in the end would be able to use a proxy server TO reach the site... right?

[SparrowWings]

It's the forum server itself that is unreachable; despite the dozen different ways I tried pinging, tracerouting, etc, I got stuck at the same point as Lapushka when I was getting timeouts. Odds are no one is having a DNS resolution issue.

I also checked multiple IPs against all kinds of blacklists, with no useful results. The blacklists are what, at least in my mind, could have caused it to be a semi-ISP issue, though. Perhaps the forum got unintentionally added to one that is used by multiple (but clearly not all) ISPs. But since I was able to connect directly via the modem, just not via the router, that seems to negate the shared blacklist idea.

How either the forum's server or all of our individual affected routers manage to (apparently) be the source of the issue, yet be inconsistent about whom it affects and at what times, though, totally confuses me. I don't know enough about networking to know what other options exist that could cause something like this.

[lapushka]

It's the forum server itself that is unreachable; despite the dozen different ways I tried pinging, tracerouting, etc, I got stuck at the same point as Lapushka when I was getting timeouts. Odds are no one is having a DNS resolution issue.

I also checked multiple IPs against all kinds of blacklists, with no useful results. The blacklists are what, at least in my mind, could have caused it to be a semi-ISP issue, though. Perhaps the forum got unintentionally added to one that is used by multiple (but clearly not all) ISPs. But since I was able to connect directly via the modem, just not via the router, that seems to negate the shared blacklist idea.

How either the forum's server or all of our individual affected routers manage to (apparently) be the source of the issue, yet be inconsistent about whom it affects and at what times, though, totally confuses me. I don't know enough about networking to know what other options exist that could cause something like this.

*That* tells us something priceless & valuable. Worth checking out further. Can other people "tracert" (traceroute) the forum? See what that tells us. I think we might be onto something here.

[foreveryours]

It's the forum server itself that is unreachable; despite the dozen different ways I tried pinging, tracerouting, etc, I got stuck at the same point as Lapushka when I was getting timeouts. Odds are no one is having a DNS resolution issue.

I also checked multiple IPs against all kinds of blacklists, with no useful results. The blacklists are what, at least in my mind, could have caused it to be a semi-ISP issue, though. Perhaps the forum got unintentionally added to one that is used by multiple (but clearly not all) ISPs. But since I was able to connect directly via the modem, just not via the router, that seems to negate the shared blacklist idea.

How either the forum's server or all of our individual affected routers manage to (apparently) be the source of the issue, yet be inconsistent about whom it affects and at what times, though, totally confuses me. I don't know enough about networking to know what other options exist that could cause something like this.

That suggests a firewall issue inside your router. Router firmware does occassionally get upgraded but it's generally not automatic. Or it could be just an old router. Without the latest and greatest, things can stop working "for no reason". You have to log into the router interface and manually "upgrade firmware" yourself if any is available.

Could that be your issue?

[SparrowWings]

That suggests a firewall issue inside your router. Router firmware does occassionally get upgraded but it's generally not automatic. Or it could be just an old router. Without the latest and greatest, things can stop working "for no reason". You have to log into the router interface and manually "upgrade firmware" yourself if any is available.

Could that be your issue?

Considering it started working for me again without anything being different on my end (including the firmware), no.

That said, while I was unable to get in, I did try disabling the router's firewall -- which did nothing, so I re-enabled it.

For whatever reason, something trickled through over the course of several days to cause the problem. Whatever changed that fixed it for me, probably also has to trickle through to resolve it.

[lapushka]

foreveryours, any ideas on how come this suddenly occurred across the board, as in not in 1 or 2 people, because yes then you could claim user error, but the mods have stated now multiple times that it is a lot of people on here, not once but many times, right, and that ultimately means it's not "us". I don't get why it "should be", either.

Besides what's your answer on the fact that we *can* get through by using a proxy? Because that is for sure proof it's not "us".

ETA/ Also that your tracert hangs at the same moment for both me as SparrowWings, says something that should be not ignored (as you did) but further investigated. I would love to see what other traceroutes give as a result. Could people not getting through see what this says?

[EdG]

I think there are two possibilities:

* LHC was inadvertently blocked at the ISP level.
* LHC adopted some form of anti-bot filtering which causes false positives. I note there are 68 "guests" right now, which is fewer than I have seen in the past.

Ed

[lapushka]

Sounds very plausible!

ETA/ Err, except the hang-up occurs *after* the ISP level. For both SparrowWings & I! At the server N° I mentioned earlier!