Forum access

craiguitar

Power User
I'm having trouble getting access to the forum from any device in my home. (I'm using my work stuff to get access here). I can access any other website from my PC's, tablet's, phones etc at home, but not the fractal forum. I'm in the UK and my router is Virgin Media. I spoke to Virgin about it and they did some line tests etc. but said there was no problem, and that I should contact Fractal to ask if I'd somehow been blocked. Can't see that really because I tried via my wife's ipad and that didn't work either. I'm not up on IP addresses & stuff, I don't really understand it, but surely the internet either works or it doesn't? Why would it not allow access to one website?

I tries rebooting the router, re-setting it, all sorts, but still no joy...

Anyone else in the UK on VM having this issue?
 
Still no forum access from home. I can get on this site anywhere else, like here (at work...when I should be working!). It's been a week now. It's like I'm being punished...of all the sites to get blocked from, it's probably one of those I visit most frequently. Gutted!
 
Still no forum access from home. I can get on this site anywhere else, like here (at work...when I should be working!). It's been a week now. It's like I'm being punished...of all the sites to get blocked from, it's probably one of those I visit most frequently. Gutted!

Try clearing the browser cache. Also check the firewall software to make sure the Fractal URL didn't get put on the naughty list.
 
Try clearing the browser cache. Also check the firewall software to make sure the Fractal URL didn't get put on the naughty list.

I can't access the site from any device in my home, PC, ipad, ipod, phone, so it's harder to explain. Clearing the cache in any one of those devices won't fix the issue. My ISP claim nothing's wrong, and I've yet to hear back from forum admin, but I'm sure they'll say the same thing.
 
Check and make sure DNS is resolving correctly.

How do I do that? I'm not savvy with these things. I thought the internet access either worked or it didn't. All other websites work just fine.

I'm about to leave work now & go home for the weekend...where....I can't access this site, so I guess I'll catch up again on Monday :-(
 
On a Windows computer, press the Window Key + R, this should pop-up a run window. Type CMD in the command line and press enter. At the DOS prompt (sorry...command prompt), type NSLOOKUP and press enter. Now type in the fractal URL (http://forum.fractalaudio.com) and see if it resolves to an IP address.
 
Should come back something like this.

U:\>nslookup forum.fractalaudio.com
Server: (This will be your DNS Server)
Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (Your DNS server iP address will be here)

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: forum.fractalaudio.com
Address: 72.52.184.171 (this should be what you see)

U:\>
 
Thanks, here is what appears. Looks like something's wrong...

Loose the 'http://' bit when you do the nslookup call. You're trying to resolve a hostname to a DNS address, not fetch content with a specific protocol. Type it:

nslookup forum.fractalaudio.com

And:

ping forum.fractalaudio.com
 
Here's what appears now...

Looks like your ISP is filtering that site for some reason Craig. Can you call Virgin's ISP support to ask them why you wouldn't be able to resolve that name or navigate to the webpage?

Solid troubleshooting advice Ian and Jack!
 
Thanks guys, I'll fire this back at my ISP, see what they respond with...

So your DNS server is working, the domain name was resolved to the proper IP address.

I can ping that IP from Canada, although, it timed out a couple times first. Try using the -t (continuous pings) switch, like this;

ping -t 72.52.184.171

Let it run for a several pings and see what happens. Ctril-C to stop it.

Could be the firewall in your router. Do you know how to access it to check if there is a rule that blocks the Fractal site?
 
That's the correct IP for the forum server.

Let's see where the problem is occurring for you by tracing the route from your computer to the forum server. Run:

tracert forum.fractalaudio.com

And report the output back here.

It should look something like:

Code:
> traceroute forum.fractalaudio.com
traceroute to forum.fractalaudio.com (72.52.184.171), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  router.asus.com (192.168.2.1)  1.837 ms  0.992 ms  0.582 ms
 2  192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254)  1.184 ms  1.266 ms  1.254 ms
 3  108-67-0-3.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net (108.67.0.3)  25.387 ms  26.916 ms  25.484 ms
 4  * * *
 5  12.83.39.197 (12.83.39.197)  28.504 ms
    12.83.39.193 (12.83.39.193)  29.845 ms
    12.83.39.197 (12.83.39.197)  27.764 ms
 6  gar23.sffca.ip.att.net (12.122.114.5)  27.368 ms  26.853 ms  28.597 ms
 7  192.205.32.210 (192.205.32.210)  27.424 ms  28.991 ms  28.618 ms
 8  * ae-1-3515.ear2.chicago2.level3.net (4.69.134.46)  77.952 ms  78.465 ms
 9  liquidweb.edge4.chicago2.level3.net (4.35.103.6)  77.858 ms  79.953 ms *
10  lw-dc2-core1-te7-2.rtr.liquidweb.com (209.59.157.81)  141.770 ms  82.655 ms  84.804 ms
11  lw-dc2-dist5-te8-1.rtr.liquidweb.com (209.59.157.136)  84.365 ms  83.723 ms  83.220 ms
12  forum.fractalaudio.com (72.52.184.171)  83.812 ms  84.244 ms  85.548 ms
 
So your DNS server is working, the domain name was resolved to the proper IP address.

I can ping that IP from Canada, although, it timed out a couple times first. Try using the -t (continuous pings) switch, like this;

ping -t 72.52.184.171

Let it run for a several pings and see what happens. Ctril-C to stop it.

Could be the firewall in your router. Do you know how to access it to check if there is a rule that blocks the Fractal site?

I don't know how to access the firewall in my router, but I tried what you suggested and here's the result.

 
Agreed! Looks like a routing problem upstream. My tracert goes right through to Fractal in 12 hops.

1 44 ms 6 ms 2 ms mynetwork.home [192.168.2.1]
2 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms bas4-oshawa95_lo0_SYMP.net.bell.ca [64.230.200.1
40]
3 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms agg1-oshawa95_5-2-0_100.net.bell.ca [64.230.102.
240]
4 23 ms 24 ms 27 ms tcore3-toronto21_tengige0-9-1-0.net.bell.ca [64.
230.48.132]
5 23 ms 21 ms 21 ms tcore3-chicagocp_hundredgige0-8-0-0.net.bell.ca
[64.230.79.161]
6 24 ms 22 ms 23 ms bx6-chicagodt_0-6-0-0.net.bell.ca [64.230.79.85]

7 28 ms 21 ms 20 ms be4247.ccr21.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com [38.122.18
1.153]
8 24 ms 23 ms 22 ms be2409.rcr11.b002281-5.ord03.atlas.cogentco.com
[154.54.29.66]
9 69 ms 41 ms 50 ms cogent-chi.liquidweb.com [38.104.103.166]
10 44 ms 44 ms 98 ms lw-dc2-core2-vlan41.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.15
7.204]
11 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms lw-dc2-dist6-te8-2.rtr.liquidweb.com [209.59.157
.142]
12 29 ms 28 ms 28 ms forum.fractalaudio.com [72.52.184.171]

Trace complete.
 
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