I missed a bill payment. It’s my fault: I tried to log into the utility’s website, but it was unreachable. I figured it was a hiccup and I’d check back later. The problem: The website hasn’t been available for weeks. Is it me?
\n
\nThe silly thing about this problem was that I blamed myself. That’s typically what most computer users do. “It must have been something I did,” they mutter. I muttered.<\/p>\n
In this case, I was puzzled why this one website was unreachable. Coincidentally, I was checking out various network commands in a terminal window. So I figured I botched something.<\/p>\n
To confirm that things were okay, I tried accessing other websites. Everywhere I went on the Internet seemed to be working. It was just that one website I couldn’t get into. It would timeout.<\/p>\n
I phoned the utility, and they said that the website was working just fine. So I figured it was my ISP: I tried accessing the site by using my cell phone, which is on another network. The site came up just fine.<\/p>\n
Then I used a proxy server.<\/p>\n
A proxy server is a host on the Internet, which you can use to access the Internet. It’s like watching a TV on a television show — a window in a window, as it were. The proxy server accesses websites you can’t normally access, typically because the site or your ISP is blocking access. A proxy server is also a way of anonymizing your Internet access.<\/p>\n
In my case, I used the proxy server to determine whether it was my IP address that was being blocked. And it was!<\/p>\n
Being a nerd, I wanted to find out why I was being blocked. Eventually, I was able to speak with a network administrator at the utility. He said I wasn’t knowingly being blocked, but he was very curious why I couldn’t access the site.<\/p>\n
After a few hours, the network admin phoned me up and confessed that my IP was being blocked: Because my IP address ends in dot-zero, their Cisco router was rejecting it as an illegitimate address. Normally, dot-zero addresses are used for network infrastructure. They don’t make HTTP (web site) requests.<\/p>\n
The network admin is going to contact Cisco to see whether anything can be done. According to my nerd friends on Facebook, it should be a relatively easy fix. I’ll keep you apprised as to the solution.<\/p>\n
In the meanwhile, keep in mind that all computer goofups are probably not due to things you’ve done. Apparently I have to remind myself of that fact as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like many computer users, I was too quick to blame myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,17],"class_list":["post-7271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc","tag-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7271"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7275,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7271\/revisions\/7275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}