Re: A Baffling Question

Hi Jim,
You wrote:

  I've got a duzy for you.  I really hope someone has an answer.

  As of Wednesday night, I have had the strangest thing happening with my 
computer and the internet.  When I'm at home, it will connect online, as usual. 
 It will let me go to Google and a few websites, and I can use Outlook Express 
to get my e-mail.  However, all of the websites I try and access on a regular 
basis weren't opening.  It would say that Internet Explorer couldn't access 
that page or something to that effect.  I figured I could go to these page via 
google, since I was able to connect to Google.  However, when I'd hit enter on 
one of the links, it would tell me that the page couldn't be accessed.  The 
next day, I figured I'd try this same thing at work.   So, I brought my laptop 
to my office and was able to connect wirelessly just fine.  I ran some of the 
same websites, without doing any change whatsoever, and everything ran as it 
always has run.  I went back home that night and tried going onto some of these 
sites again, and the same problem was happening as the previous night.  

  This is the strangest thing I've seen yet, because it's as if it knows when I 
get home and goes into restriction mode or something to that effect.  What is 
going on, and how do I fix it?

  Now, I did try doing some things, such as going to internet options and 
deleting all of my cookies and internet files and such.  That still didn't 
work.  I have no idea what else to do.

  Well, first off, are you connecting at home through a router?  If so, some 
routers, like my Linksys WRT54G, will let you implement access restrictions.  
The restrictions can take several forms.  You can block Internet Access on 
certain days or at certain times.  You can block access to certain web 
addresses.  Or, you can tell the router to block access to web sites based on 
keywords found in the web page content. 
  When you implement such restrictions you can save them as specific access 
policies and recall them at will.  So, you could have a policy in place that 
keeps the kids off the porn sites, myspace and facebook, for example, then have 
another policy which has no restrictions, which you can turn on when the kids 
are away or off to bed.

  I didn't know that routers had that kind of control built into them, but I 
got a hint about this when I was looking at one of my friends' ActionTech 
routers last night.  In the case of that router, those access restrictions were 
called parental controls.  

  So, as a long shot, if you are connecting through a router at home, go into 
its setup pages and see if access restrictions or parental controls 
accidentally got turned on and, if so, turn them off and save the settings.  
Or, you could reset the router to its factory defaults and tweak it as 
necessary to reflect your particular security requirements.
  I hope this helps some.

  Good luck.
  Tom

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