Strange issue after downtime - specific websites blocked.

[Overfiend1981]

Hello everyone,

About two days ago there was a small few hours downtime in my 50mb Virgin Media service.
After the service went back up I have noticed that I have no access to few specific websites which I use on a daily basis.

manly I'm speaking about www.gpotato.eu and all associated subpages - it's a games portal which my family uses quite a lot.

Have tried everything, experimented with browser, checked the router - everything seems in order. I have checked the website from other's people house which are using Virgin Media broadband, and the site is working perfectly.

After speaking to some IT colleague it seems to him that I have IP that is blocked/blacklisted by that specific portal. It's very strange as the website worked without problem 3 days ago.

Also following his advice I tried various free web proxies as well as one that virgin media provides (webcache.virginmedia.com) - of course access to the website works. Unfortunately using proxies I won't be able to login and use site services.

I can't change my IP by changing Mac address due to using wireless router - changing MAC address of the cable modem resulted in no IP being assigned therefore it's no go.

Is there anything I can do - or shall I phone customer service and explain the situation?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

[vanman]

Hello everyone,
- changing MAC address of the cable modem resulted in no IP being assigned therefore it's no go

HOW DID YOU CHANGE THE MAC address ON THE CABLE MODEM :confused:

[Jon T]

If you alter the MAC address of the Ethernet port that connects to the cable modem, you need to power cycle the cable modem for it the recognise the new address.

Also just re-read your original post, you will ned to change the MAC address on the WAN port of you router, once you've done this power off the router and the cable modem. Turn the cable modem back on, wait for it to stabbilise, and then switch your router back on.

---------- Post added at 17:56 ---------- Previous post was at 17:55 ----------

HOW DID YOU CHANGE THE MAC address ON THE CABLE MODEM :confused:

You can't.......well you can, but Virgin wouldn't like it!

[vanman]

I could be wrong but you you seem to know a lot about networks and proxies
this is not spam is it :Yes:

[MovedGoalPosts]

You should change the mac address of the router's WAN port then reboot modem. That will normally allocate a different internet IP address.

[Overfiend1981]

Hello and thanks for quick reply....

No this is not a spam - the things that I have described I have learned on the fly and using internet to dig out information.

Although I didn't know that I have to "power cycle" the modem when I change MAC address of the WAN port - I will do that and hopefully it will help.

Will post later after seeing what it has done.

Thanks again guys.

---------- Post added at 18:25 ---------- Previous post was at 18:10 ----------

Hi again,

Just to update, after changing WAN mac address and power-cycling the modem I indeed received new IP address.

it was like xxx.xxx.xxx.108
new one is xxx.xxx.xxx.151

Where "xxx" stayed the same accross both adresses. Unfortunately that didn't solve the problem and now I'm clueless again.

In the meantime I spoke to Virgin Media customer department and they said that there is no way that they block specific websites and it must be related to my pc specifically.
Although would it happen to 3 pc's at the same time? I'm trying all my PC's at home and all are behaving the same way from the same very moment - all security software is disabled so it's not firewall / content filtering related.

Please help :(

[caph]

Can you ping the address? I'm looking to eliminate a DNS issue from the list of potential problems. I think they've got pings disabled so don't worry about not getting any replies but it should resolve to 195.27.0.130 in the first line of the ping response.

[Sirius]

Hello and thanks for quick reply....

No this is not a spam - the things that I have described I have learned on the fly and using internet to dig out information.

Although I didn't know that I have to "power cycle" the modem when I change MAC address of the WAN port - I will do that and hopefully it will help.

Will post later after seeing what it has done.

Thanks again guys.

---------- Post added at 18:25 ---------- Previous post was at 18:10 ----------

Hi again,

Just to update, after changing WAN mac address and power-cycling the modem I indeed received new IP address.

it was like xxx.xxx.xxx.108
new one is xxx.xxx.xxx.151

Where "xxx" stayed the same accross both adresses. Unfortunately that didn't solve the problem and now I'm clueless again.

In the meantime I spoke to Virgin Media customer department and they said that there is no way that they block specific websites and it must be related to my pc specifically.
Although would it happen to 3 pc's at the same time? I'm trying all my PC's at home and all are behaving the same way from the same very moment - all security software is disabled so it's not firewall / content filtering related.

Please help :(
Its working fine for me in Warrington using opendns.

I am using opendns server with address 208.67.222.222

[pip08456]

Works fine for me without cnanging DNS servers.

[Overfiend1981]

I've tried to ping the address and there is no ping reply but it resolves 195.27.0.130 as an IP address.

What's also even more strange is that I've tried to connect one of the PC using wired connection instead of wireless and also connected one PC directly to cable modem without using router at all.

It doesn't work either way :(

Will try that open DNS....

Tried...internet works without problem using 208.67.222.222 as DNS server - but this website doesn't.

Don't know what to do really.....

[tweetiepooh]

In the past I've had issues with some websites. In my case it was one server for a company would work, another wouldn't. Very odd. DNS resolved OK and other ISP's and other VM users were OK.

Turned out it was a routing issue as one site routed nicely, the other went all the way around the houses via some really wierd route. This may be your issue.

You need to traceroute to the host and see what answer you get back. Compare that to a traceroute to another server in a similar geographic area but other servers may do. If you have the same issue I did then it will be pretty obvious from the traceroute. The difference will be very marked.

[Hom3r]

I can access the site without any problems, I live in CM20.