Strange Problem

[Allanv]

None of my home computers can access PH, it never loads or timesout it just sits there doing well nothing.
ping and tracert are fine, wired or wireless yet strangly my phone can from the same connection?

I am now flumuxed.

[Famous Graham]

Allanv said:

None of my home computers can access PH, it never loads or timesout it just sits there doing well nothing.
ping and tracert are fine, wired or wireless yet strangly my phone can from the same connection?

I am now flumuxed.

I've had exactly the same problem the last 2 days. Just fixed it though, by changing the MAC address of my router.

My phone was fine too, but I'm wondering if it was defaulting to 3G/GPRS when it couldn't reach the site via wifi...

[Allanv]

Famous Graham said:

I've had exactly the same problem the last 2 days. Just fixed it though, by changing the MAC address of my router.

My phone was fine too, but I'm wondering if it was defaulting to 3G/GPRS when it couldn't reach the site via wifi...

Are you on Virginmedia by any chance? I changed the MAC on the router to a few different combinations and it still made no difference, but I will keep playing with it. Working from home so need the connection stable for now.

And mine started playing up 2 days ago as well spooky.

[Famous Graham]

Allanv said:

Famous Graham said:

I've had exactly the same problem the last 2 days. Just fixed it though, by changing the MAC address of my router.

My phone was fine too, but I'm wondering if it was defaulting to 3G/GPRS when it couldn't reach the site via wifi...

Are you on Virginmedia by any chance? I changed the MAC on the router to a few different combinations and it still made no difference, but I will keep playing with it. Working from home so need the connection stable for now.

And mine started playing up 2 days ago as well spooky.

I am indeed.

Just for clarification, it was my own router that I changed the MAC address on, which sits behind the cable modem. Then rebooted both of them.

[LordGrover]

Changed the MAC address? Not the IP address?

[Famous Graham]

Correct.

[nuster100]

Odd to see how a MAC change would fix this.


What about trying a different web browser?

Have you tried clearing the cache?

Jay

[Famous Graham]

nuster100 said:

Odd to see how a MAC change would fix this.


What about trying a different web browser?

Have you tried clearing the cache?

Jay

I tried Chrome, Firefox and IE on my work laptop, my own laptop, and my desktop. None of them would load PH. Every other site I could think of worked fine. Some of those have never even been used before (IE on my laptop for example).

I rebooted all of them. I rebooted my router, hub and Virgin cable modem. I tried fixed IPs on the internal network instead of DHCP, renewing the lease on the virgin IP, using other DNS servers...you name it.

Nothing worked. Googling "one website not working" brought back a few mentions of router MAC address changing, so I gave it a bash. And it worked. NFI why, mind

(ETA - I also went as far as dropping Garlick a line to see if my IP address had been erroneously blocked )

Edited by Famous Graham on Friday 3rd June 14:46

[Allanv]

Famous Graham said:

nuster100 said:

Odd to see how a MAC change would fix this.


What about trying a different web browser?

Have you tried clearing the cache?

Jay

I tried Chrome, Firefox and IE on my work laptop, my own laptop, and my desktop. None of them would load PH. Every other site I could think of worked fine. Some of those have never even been used before (IE on my laptop for example).

I rebooted all of them. I rebooted my router, hub and Virgin cable modem. I tried fixed IPs on the internal network instead of DHCP, renewing the lease on the virgin IP, using other DNS servers...you name it.

Nothing worked. Googling "one website not working" brought back a few mentions of router MAC address changing, so I gave it a bash. And it worked. NFI why, mind

That is about as much as I did before I gave up LOL. My laptop has never accessed PH and is not upto date so I knew a MS patch or a AV update was not to blame.
And my reason for posting on here was for the same reason as you, to see if I was blocked

[Allanv]

Right just changed the MAC address and rebooted router and modem, posting this from my own system now.

[Famous Graham]

On reflection, I think it IS an IP issue. But changing the MAC address forces a reallocation of IP with Virgin. My external IP hasn't changed in months. It has now, after doing that.

[kinabalu]

Same problem here so on my phone. Unable to load any page for 3 days now & its le man's week!! Only this website all others ok. With virgin but no idea how to change mac address. Really driving me mad.., doesn't time out just gets stuck loading

[nuster100]

A router re-boot should assign you a new IP from your ISP if you leave it off for a few mins

Jay

[Allanv]

nuster100 said:

A router re-boot should assign you a new IP from your ISP if you leave it off for a few mins

Jay

Failing that remove the thick white cable from the back of the modem, assuming you are a cable modem user.
leave out for 10 mins or so should force a new IP.

rebooting or turning off the router for me never works but I think it may do if you use one of the combined router / modems they supply.

[kinabalu]

Thanks both of you for trying to help. Re boot ie just turned everything off at the wall didn't work. Just un screwed the white co ax out the modem. Fingers crossed.

[kinabalu]

No joy. I despair. Still only this site, bizarre or what?

[gowmonster]

if you are on virgin it may be this.... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/03/virgin_med...

if you can get to the register that is.

<tech hat>
open a command prompt (or terminal mac/linux fans)
type nslookup www.pistonheads.com

you should see the following.
C:\Users\Ally>nslookup www.pistonheads.com
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.0.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.pistonheads.com
Address: 195.225.218.139

if you get that far good. now lets try to route to the address.
tracert 195.225.218.139 (traceroute on mac/linux)
C:\Users\Ally>tracert 195.225.218.139

Tracing route to phd-vip01.lon2.carrenza.net [195.225.218.139]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 26 ms 22 ms 14 ms 10.138.192.1
3 8 ms 11 ms 10 ms uddi-geam-1a-v11.network.virginmedia.net [62.31.112.40]
4 16 ms 8 ms 13 ms uddi-core-1a-ae1-0.network.virginmedia.net [80.3.16.81]
5 24 ms 25 ms 22 ms leed-bb-1a-as10-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.70]
6 21 ms 23 ms 21 ms brnt-bb-1b-as2-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.175.26]
7 26 ms 32 ms 44 ms brnt-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.50]
8 22 ms 23 ms 26 ms telc-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.74]
9 37 ms 27 ms 20 ms te1-3.ccr01.lon04.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.15.69]
10 28 ms 47 ms 34 ms te2-8.mpd01.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.3.189]
11 27 ms 28 ms 38 ms brightview.demarc.cogentco.com [149.6.146.194]
12 51 ms 31 ms 32 ms fe2-1.core2.lon2.carrenza.net [195.225.219.18]
13 21 ms 27 ms 23 ms phd-vip01.lon2.carrenza.net [195.225.218.139]

Trace complete.

if you get any drops or * in the out put it could be an indicator that there is a routing problem (it also can mean a router in the path is dropping icmp packets for whatever reason)

[kinabalu]

Hi again,

OMG that last is way beyond my capabilities.

Anyway, having just read it's a big problem with Virgin nationwide for the last 3 days ended up ringing them.

Suggest any other Virgin users experiencing similar problems do so, it was a very quick fix, just had to change LAN settings & heh presto am back on line.

Now, is there any way I can use this issue to re apply for those Aston pit lane passes!!