still can't open the site

[Doug Hoople]

I'm not asking for specific fixes either, although I was half-hoping that there was something identifying in the Mandolin Cafe that is not present in the message boards that we can get at, and that we might figure out what it is and change it.

It's looking like that was too much to hope for, but it's certainly not a problem that I want to press any further on you good people who run the Cafe.

My IT department is way too big to get them to even look at this issue (global company, 10s of thousands of employees), and my guess is that if I raised the request, they'd answer a question of their own, "So what are you doing on that message board during your working day anyway?"

Sigh. The one message board I'd like regular access to is the one that I can't get to.

[Randi Gormley]

Update on the access issue:
IT spent some time on this and eventually gave me access from work. hooray!
here's what i was told: the IP address, which they listed as 174.133.252.252, was on a 'black list' of IP addresses because of the 174 prefix. At least for us, the blacklist was of "bad organizations or sites that haven't been released to the public." I wasn't sure what 'bad organizations' meant, but the IT guy said it had to do with something he called a bogon or bogus open network. I don't know if this will help anybody else, but it might mean something to the IT people.

[MikeEdgerton]

Well first off, welcome back. Second, if they are blocking by the first octet in an IP address they have made their jobs very easy but severely limited the places their user can go. Usually they choose a range of numbers to block.

Learn about IP Addresses

[ApK]

Might be a result of outdated or incorrect bogon filtering (a term I just learned today).
Pass this to your IT guys:
http://www.bgp-and-beyond.com/index....-then-....html

General info on bogon filtering:
http://www.team-cymru.org/Services/Bogons/

Looks like not too long ago, it was appropriate to block the entire 174 space, but not anymore.

[Tim]

For what its worth, I didn't try to get the IT staff to change anything. On a whim I decided to try again from work after a few weeks and was able to connect. Of course, that could change at any time.

Still, if you are one of those who couldn't connect from work, it doesn't hurt to retry periodically.

[recon]

I had a similar situation with mandozine.com. I could not access it from home nor work (same ISP). The solution was the same as mentioned here. That is, my ISP had to unblock the IP address.