Anyone else ever have their IP address blocked to OCDO?

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Hi all!

I cannot seem to even have opencarry.mywowbb.com open in my browser, nor can I successfully ping it or tracert it from home or work. However, when I head over to a friend's house and log in using my same laptop I can magically get in, no problem.

I have nothing in my PM inbox from anyone, nor have I received an email from a moderator telling me that I somehow goofed up/pissed someone off.

Am I missing something? Has this happened to anyone else? If so, what was the resolution?

I am posting this here in the California section because this is where I do almost all of my posting to OCDO. So I guess you could say this is OCDO related, if I cannot log in, read or post from my home or work IP address to this forum.

Should I continue to be blocked, and anyone knows what happened or why, please drop me a PM or email me at my screen name at hotmail. (if I am blocked further the hotmail route is the only way I'll be able to reply)

Thanks!

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Site seems to have techincal problems that I'm not geek enough to understand. This a.m. for instance it is outrageously slow even by OCDO standards and cursor response time is abysmal. Maybe they lack capacity in some sense.

As to blocking, I haven't been afflicted yet though I have been cautioned. Moderators occasionally seem somewhat arbitrary and capricious and I suspect them of latent political correctness.

So your problem could fall into either or both areas. I wish you luck as the site is enjoyable and informative and fills a real need.

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There have been problems with the board, I have recently been unable to get to the board and believe it's technical and does not involve human decsions.

I'm sure the board moderators or web master will deal with the issue.

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I too have had problems in the recent past (yesterday all day and an empisode about 1or 2 weeks ago for several days). I could get the home page here in E. North Carolina but was not successful in jumping to the forum or anywhere else. I count myself among the clueless as far as why when it comes to the function of compusters or lack thereof.

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I doubt it's a ban by the mods. I'm sure they would not only inform you of the ban, but would disable your account. In many cases it's easy to change your IP, so blocking an IP would be ineffective.

Are you sure your IP is somehow blocked? Or are you assuming that based on inability to access from home and work? Is this the only site you're having trouble accessing?

Most likely the issue is with your browser. The simplest way to correct such an issue is to clear your cache and cookies.

(Disclaimer! This will delete your browsing history, will clear the URLs from the drop-down location menu, will reset authenticated sessions (requiring you to log back in to sites that normally "remember" you), and will reset any UI settings stored in your browser cookies by various sites.)

• For Internet Explorer 8, follow these steps:
  • On the Menu Bar, select "Tools"
  • Select "Internet Options" from the drop-down menu
  • On the "General" tab, about half-way down the menu, there will be a section called "Browsing History" - click the "Delete" button in this section.

• For Mozilla Firefox 5, follow these steps:
  • Press shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Del (hold the Control and Shift keys simultaneously and click Delete once).
  • On the Menu Bar, select "Tools"
  • Select "Clear Private Data" from the drop-down menu

If you have earlier versions of IE or Firefox, there may be seperate sections for cookies, history, and temporary internet files. You don't really need to clear your history, but be sure to clear the other two. That should fix any browser issues by forcing the page to reload from scratch, rather than possibly loading corrupted page info from memory.

Hope this helps.

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There is something going o with either the server or service provider. Last week I could get the site from home with no problem but could not from work. On my work machine I moved my connection from behind our firewall to in front and had no problems. The next day it was working behind or in front of the firewall. This week at home sometimes it works and sometimes doesn't. It appears to be a problem in the server itself rather than a routing problem as IP address problems are random rather than specific to a certain block.

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Thanks much for the replies!

The site let me in through my home IP address and work IP address this morning. However, it is running slower than usual. The resources on my task manager are pegged while this site loads scripts, yet are normal on others.

I appreciate the suggestions, especially CA_Libertarian's browser related hints.

I was technically (or geekily) vague in my original post as to not explain how I was able to determine that it was an IP address blocking.

Here's why I believe my IP addresses (home and work) were targeted, either by persons unknown, or by the OCDO server as a glitch.

I use different browsers on different sites for a myriad of reasons; some for Java support, some for plug-in support, and others for remote-site image blocking of ads. I could not connect to OCDO using IE7, Firefox or Opera browsers from home or work. Nor could I connect when I used Linux instead of WinXP.

Sitting in my house and using the same laptop, I can connect to my wifi as well as a friend's. Same browsers, different IP addresses, and I could jump right on using my friend's ISP, yet I could not from mine. It was as simple as selecting a different SSID from my wireless connection manager and voila', I could connect fine. I could also "remote desktop" into my work pc, yet I seemed blocked from there. This leads me to believe either my work and home (static) IP addresses were blacklisted, or both my ISP and my work ISP were unable to connect to OCDO and OCDO only; other websites loaded just fine.

It isn't a DNS issue, because opencarry.mywowbb.com resolves fine to 69.16.220.29

I had emptied my cache and cookies of all browsers, to no avail.

I could connect fine using my cell phone's IE-mobile and Skyfire browser (different IP address)

To summarize:

My home and work IP address -> no go
Friend's IP address, my cell phone browser or using an anonymizing proxy -> no problem!

Preliminary conclusion: my work and home IP address were somehow blocked, either inadvertently as a server software hiccup, or by design by someone I may have upset. Most likely a hiccup, but it sure seemed fishy when I couldn't connect from work or home, yet I could connect from the same computer, same browser session if I jumped on a different IP address.

I just seems odd that once I managed to get on via a different IP address and post my question, that I can get in without a problem. Now where did I leave my roll of tin foil? I have a hat to make.:uhoh:

I agree with the premise that if it were a moderator-initiated block I would be notified of my transgession, if any, and allowed to either slink away or beg for mercy.

Should something change (for better or worse) I'll keep you posted.

Thanks all!

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It wouldn't load for me all day yesterday, and most of this morning. Seems to be working fine now.

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***UPDATE***

I just heard from our friendly neighborhood moderator and it seems to be a known issue on the distant end.

It appears that I haven't been purposely blocked and that it is an issue of which they are aware. It is intermittent, which is the worst kind!

We now return to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

Thanks again to everyone!

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The site has been having intermittent issues for the past month. I did a reverse DNS lookup and contacted the provider who actually hosts the servers. It appears that DNS is getting propagated with a bad entry. Or they could have a bad piece of hardware internally. I am able to trace rout all the way through the internet and it dies at their facilities.