OT: Very strange

Please disregard...

Just booted the router again, and everything is now working. Still very strange...

I can think of at least half a dozen ways to achieve that effect none of which you can test because...its stopped now.

Just out of interest - how would you do that?

Traceroute to the places you can't reach is a good way to start.

ISPs tend not to have their best and brightest in at weekends so if things go haywire it may be Monday morning before it works again.

Could be its look up for the site was scrambled, but it is very odd that a reboot fixed it only after some goes. Could the reboot have just been coincidence with them getting thir system running properly?

Brian

Your wired (ADSL?) connection was down for a while. Sometimes the underlying network can get confused and even though you are connected to the exchange you don't have any 'net access. Couple of possible reasons for that, there has been a major blip and your ISP can't cope with all the ADSL login requests when things come back or there is a problem in the BT network and you get "parked" on a BT test "site". Both of these are normally cleared by and ADSL or router reset.

Spoke too early. This morning I once again experience the same problem... ;-(

... but web access never stopped working. Only website I couldn't access was

typo CAN'T test because its stopped now

looks like THAT site was having issues then.

Just spent an hour on the phone with PlusNet. They were initially as confused as I was, but eventually the guy managed to get hold of their top networking guru, who cracked it in 3 minutes... What they believe happened is as follows:

- I recently installed an IP camera that was set up to upload videos to my web space on detection of movement. I made various tests to make sure it did what I wanted it to do, resulting in many videos been uploaded.

- Their system noticed what it considered an abnormally high traffic/access to my static IP address, and blocked it.

- This in turn resulted in me been unable to access emails using wifi, but managing using my mobile (dynamic IP).

They have now removed the block, and everything seems to be working again (think I've heard that before...).

Fingers crossed.

Thanks again for all the useful suggestions.

A long two-penceworth, just for your interest (I had a similar, but far less complicated problem):

The real issue, I feel, is that Plusnet are *now* (after their recent massive sales campaigns) like most other BB providers: their helpline staff don't really know much, but they DO want to sound authoritative and knowledgable, and so end up confusing the user considerably worse than they were to start with.

I'm with Plusnet. Their Usenet news service had a whoopsie weekend before last. I made the very grave mistake of not trying the bleeding obvious (something which I'd been wont to do 3 or 4 times a day in some awful times, a couple of years ago). That is: **reboot the router**.

I tried a dozen different ways to get round the problem, and finally raised a ticket with them. Which came back later with "Well it works OK for me...." "Nowt wrong this end, sir!" ... etc.

It was another Plusnet user who solved the problem: reboot the router. This provides you with a different IP address.

It emerged that Plusnet's Usenet Service provider (giganews) authorise access to their contracted service via sets of IP addresses. Their database was somehow f***ed up the weekend before last, and so I (and many others) couldn't be authenticated. Not only was this problem not advertised on Plusnet's website, but the advisers that I dealt with either didn't know about it or (as I suspect) didn't actually realise the consequences for users. (I don't think they know what Usenet News is, actually :-(, though they probably know what an IP address is. )

None of this makes me want to change from Plusnet (been with them since

I don't want every single Service Desk adviser to be technically omniscient (impossible): I want there to be a fast, smooth tree of knowledge within the service desk, whereby "mysterious problems" can be solved first time for the user (NOT impossible), instead of being obfuscated and compounded by desperate "try this" solutions.

John

Routers quite often cache DNS lookups, so rebooting will also clear all of those.

And dumps the blocked one on some poor unsuspecting user that won't know you have been testing cameras, etc.

It would be better if plusnet had actually told you they had invoked traffic management on your IP address and better still if they invoked it on a user and not the IP address.

Glad I didn't pay the extra over BT, then. ;-)

In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus

Not had any problems with Zen Internet..

Their tech support does know what it's talking about:).....

But you do pay dearly for that service. I've just migrated from Zen to Plusnet and am paying about the same (or even a bit less) for unlimited FTTC internet (76Mbps) and phone than I was paying to Zen and BT for a limited 8Mbps service.

Tim

I'd rather have an ISP where I don't need tech support. So far so good with BT.

On the several occasions I needed tech support with the last few ISPs I used before BT, it was always the same fault. Something wrong at the exchange. I'm hoping the fibre to the end of the road is more reliable.

Good luck if you ever do.

So far, since Openreach installed my fibre, they've had to come out three times. They didn't want to come out after the first time just to fix the fact that they'd buggered up the speed the first time. My ISP (AAISP) leaned on them. I doubt BT would.