Help me fix my access to this website.

[MurphyGuy]

Ok folks, this behavior just started yesterday and I'm pulling my hair out trying to fix it.

I can not access diysolarforum.com in normal browsing mode. I have to turn on my VPN in order to get to this website and nothing I've tried works short of the VPN service.
See screen grab for what I get. I guess technically, the "Page could not be loaded" error is showing diysolarforum.com, but that's all I get.

If I turn the VPN on, it works fine.

I have tried the following to fix this:
1) Cleared cache, cookies, temp files, local storage, etc (all of it for all websites)
2) Tried Firefox in safe mode with all extensions disabled.
3) Tried Firefox in private mode
4) Flushed DNS
5) Rebooted computer
6) Tried setting my IP4 DNS to google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
7) EDIT: Tried power cycling my router.

Nothing short of activating my VPN will get me to this website and its the only website I visit that does this. It has to be some DNS issue right? But what else can I do besides flushing mine?

 

[42OhmsPA]

Hmmm did you do anything bad that would have gotten your ip banned? ? I was notified I was temporarily banned a while back, could still get to the site.
Did you happen to somehow block the sites ip?
Did you try accessing the root of the site and not a specific thread? (looking at the link in screenshot)

 

[MurphyGuy]

Hmmm did you do anything bad that would have gotten your ip banned? ? I was notified I was temporarily banned a while back, could still get to the site.

If they banned my ip, wouldn't they also ban my user account? I don't think that's the problem.

Did you happen to somehow block the sites ip?

I don't see how that could have happened as I'm not entering IP addresses on some hacker list or anything like that.

Did you try accessing the root of the site and not a specific thread? (looking at the link in screenshot)

Yup.. no luck.
I can access it right now because I turned on my VPN again. No problems logging in.

I'm stumped.

 

[Quattrohead]

Had this quite a lot with chrome on a windows 7 laptop. Firefox worked fine.

 

[John Frum]

I don't see how that could have happened as I'm not entering IP addresses on some hacker list or anything like that.

That is an argument from incredulity.

Using a VPN would change your IP source address.
It could be that some point along the way is blocking your ip address or subnet.
Sometimes you can get your ISP to purge your dhcp lease so that you get a new address.
Probably will be in the same subnet though.
Could be worth a try.

 

[fromport]

Ok folks, this behavior just started yesterday and I'm pulling my hair out trying to fix it.

I can not access diysolarforum.com in normal browsing mode. I have to turn on my VPN in order to get to this website and nothing I've tried works short of the VPN service.
See screen grab for what I get. I guess technically, the "Page could not be loaded" error is showing diysolarforum.com, but that's all I get.

If I turn the VPN on, it works fine.

I have tried the following to fix this:
1) Cleared cache, cookies, temp files, local storage, etc (all of it for all websites)
2) Tried Firefox in safe mode with all extensions disabled.
3) Tried Firefox in private mode
4) Flushed DNS
5) Rebooted computer
6) Tried setting my IP4 DNS to google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

Nothing short of activating my VPN will get me to this website and its the only website I visit that does this. It has to be some DNS issue right? But what else can I do besides flushing mine?


View attachment 126764

open a command prompt
and type a command like "ping diysolarforum.com"
This will first have to resolve the ip address of the forum server and then send a packet to should get a reply.
In my case I see:
PING diysolarforum.com (108.178.31.85) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from diysolarforum.com (108.178.31.85): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=72.8 ms
so i know both my nameserver resolvers works and the server is reachable.
Curious what yours will show.

 

[John Frum]

@upnorthandpersonal might be able to help here.

 

[MurphyGuy]

open a command prompt
and type a command like "ping diysolarforum.com"
This will first have to resolve the ip address of the forum server and then send a packet to should get a reply.
In my case I see:
PING diysolarforum.com (108.178.31.85) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from diysolarforum.com (108.178.31.85): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=72.8 ms
so i know both my nameserver resolvers works and the server is reachable.
Curious what yours will show.

Nope.. no response.

Tried pinging this website:
C:\Windows\system32>ping diysolarforum.com

Pinging diysolarforum.com [108.178.31.85] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 108.178.31.85:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

Then tried pinging google.com
C:\Windows\system32>ping google.com

Pinging google.com [142.250.191.238] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 142.250.191.238: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=52
Reply from 142.250.191.238: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=52
Reply from 142.250.191.238: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=52
Reply from 142.250.191.238: bytes=32 time=82ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 142.250.191.238:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 38ms, Maximum = 82ms, Average = 65ms

 

[MurphyGuy]

That is an argument from incredulity.

Using a VPN would change your IP source address.
It could be that some point along the way is blocking your ip address or subnet.
Sometimes you can get your ISP to purge your dhcp lease so that you get a new address.
Probably will be in the same subnet though.
Could be worth a try.

Try to get my ISP to do something? I'd have better luck asking my dog to do my taxes.

 

[MurphyGuy]

open a command prompt
and type a command like "ping diysolarforum.com"
This will first have to resolve the ip address of the forum server and then send a packet to should get a reply.
In my case I see:
PING diysolarforum.com (108.178.31.85) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from diysolarforum.com (108.178.31.85): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=72.8 ms
so i know both my nameserver resolvers works and the server is reachable.
Curious what yours will show.

Strangely enough, apparently my ISP won't allow me to perform a TraceRT command. I can do it with my VPN turned on, but if I turn my VPN off, the last return I get is my own firewall at 192.bla bla bla. and then no responses at all.

I'm not a networking genius, but its not often I can't figure something out.. damn, I'm screwed.

NOTE: I have tried to access this website on my wife's computer and it also can't connect, so I know its not MY computer, its a networking problem.

 

[John Frum]

Strangely enough, apparently my ISP won't allow me to perform a TraceRT command.

How have you ruled out your own edge device?

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

Strange. I don't think any IP is blocked as such. Seems odd you can't ping the site to begin with. Could you PM me your public IP address?

 

[42OhmsPA]

Strangely enough, apparently my ISP won't allow me to perform a TraceRT command. I can do it with my VPN turned on, but if I turn my VPN off, the last return I get is my own firewall at 192.bla bla bla. and then no responses at all.

I'm not a networking genius, but its not often I can't figure something out.. damn, I'm screwed.

NOTE: I have tried to access this website on my wife's computer and it also can't connect, so I know its not MY computer, its a networking problem.

I'm stumped as well.
Check and see if your VPN is creating a tunnel that loops back to itself? I bring this up because I was having a hell of a time getting solar assistant to connect on the laptop, then I saw a NordLynx local connection and remembered I enabled a 'killswitch' in the VPN; it wouldn't let any traffic without being connected.

Have you tried netsh winsoc reset? It's been years since I've done any networking but that was always a helpful one.

 

[42OhmsPA]

NOTE: I have tried to access this website on my wife's computer and it also can't connect, so I know its not MY computer, its a networking problem.

This make me think it would have to be a setting in the router or on the ISP end.

 

[MurphyGuy]

This make me think it would have to be a setting in the router or on the ISP end.

The only changes I've made to my router lately is to update the wireless "Guest" network that I relegate my 9 year old to using with her toys. My daughter's laptop and tablet must use the wireless "Guest" network because she's not old enough to understand viruses and malware and I don't want that crap having access to my regular LAN.

So for Christmas, we bought her a Nintendo Switch gaming thingy and I had to allow it access to the "Guest" network, and then I blocked it's access to the wider web for now.

I make configuration changes to allow and block LAN devices all the time and have never had a problem.

 

[MurphyGuy]

I'm stumped as well.
Check and see if your VPN is creating a tunnel that loops back to itself? I bring this up because I was having a hell of a time getting solar assistant to connect on the laptop, then I saw a NordLynx local connection and remembered I enabled a 'killswitch' in the VPN; it wouldn't let any traffic without being connected.

Have you tried netsh winsoc reset? It's been years since I've done any networking but that was always a helpful one.

My VPN's kill switch is turned on. If the VPN looses connection, it won't allow my computer access to the wider web. However, the kill switch thingy is not functional when the VPN is turned off and disconnected. And to confirm that statement, I have access to everything else BUT this one website. If the kill switch was doing anything, it wouldn't block just this one website.

You know what? I wish I knew what other websites were hosted on the same server as diysolarforum.com. I'd like to test to see if I can access any of them. I don't think there's any way to find that out however.

 

[MurphyGuy]

How have you ruled out your own edge device?

What is an edge device?

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

You know what? I wish I knew what other websites were hosted on the same server as diysolarforum.com.

There aren't any. It's a dedicated server/IP.

We're also not banning any IP addresses at the moment, so I'm trying to figure out what else it could be somewhere in between.

It's about midnight here though, so I might not be able to troubleshoot today anymore...

 

[John Frum]

What is an edge device?

The box that routes and performs network address translation between your private network and the internet.

 

[42OhmsPA]

Hmmmm

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