Whats the problem in the site?

[JohnH]

I've seen several users stating that lately, I am a very frequent user of this site myself and have not seen this at all, so it is not the site uptime per se. I have tried lots of different security setting with my IE7 browser trying to find if there could be some setting making a block but didn't find anything. It has been suggested that some LAN firewall (for example corporate, school, university ?) could be blocking sites, but it has not been confirmed.

 

[Bob Langlade]

I have a My Yahoo page with a direct link to VB.net Forums showing the last 5 posts. During the last two weeks it regularly showed a message like "no link to this website for the past 3 days".

 

[Administrator]

Over the past 24-48 hours the firewall went on the fritz again, it's now in bypass mode. We're working to resolve the issue. Prior to Monday, however, I am not aware of what would cause this issue if it was occuring prior to the firewall issue.

Thank you for your feedback, hopefully we can figure it out.

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

i still have yet to talk to the LAN people at my work (university) to see if this site is on the blocked list

seeing as how my job is vb.net 2003 and vb.net 2005 related i would think they would allow this site

 

[Administrator]

We're going to be putting the firewall back inline today, we got a hotfix from the vendor. If the site goes out again, please be patient, we'll bypass the firewall again until the vendor gets this issue resolved.

P.S. We use Watchguard Firebox's for firewalls - FYI

 

[TechGnome]

Was there maybe a problem with the mySQL database? Just before I couldn't get to the site anymore, I got a couple of mySQL errors about connections.

When it went down, I could ping the address and get a response.... it would simply timeout after about 30 seconds....

-tg

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

i havent said anything to the networking people here on campus, but the site works from my job now, so i'm wondering if it was a firewall (on the site) being the problem

just wanted to let you know now that this is proof that the site is not blocked on my end

hopefully you'll get this situation under control for good

 

[Administrator]

Odd! The firewall is back inline, although a firmware updated! It's actually on the fritz again and we're changing out a switch today to see if that will help, otherwise the firewall is getting yanked!

Thanks for the update, wish I did something to know what changed!

 

[Administrator]

Firewall has a new image (software version) and is back inline. Let me know if anyone has any connectivity issues from this point forward.

Thx!

 

[Administrator]

We are still trying to determine the cause of the intermittent firewall outages. The IP address of the banner ad system keeps dropping from the firewall's arp table, which used to be a separate IP but we merged to join the IP of this site, hence the reason for this site now going intermittent. I have removed the banner ad system in the interim to see if we can go 24 hours without a drop off.

Thank you for your continued patience.

 

[Administrator]

Status update on intermittent outages.

Watchguard, the makers of the firewall appliance we use, was troubleshooting this evening to determine the cause of this most painful situation. I believe they have found the problem, hence the site is back up. Let's hope it's finally fixed! Thank you for your patience while we pin down this nasty networking issue.

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

alright, I'm glad to know they're getting somewhere on this issue

 

[Administrator]

At this point all problems are resolved. If anyone is having a problem connecting to the site, please let me know. Otherwise I'll assume everyone is good to go now.

Thanks!

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

so far nothing to report from me, i'll stress test things when i get home

 

[Administrator]

Thanks JB, biggest thing from you was whether or not you could access from school or not. I assume that is still a yes.