RE: A Baffling Question

Any chance that you have no connectivity at home and what you are seeing
there is stuff in your cache - try clearing the cache and then go to
google. If no joy then you have no connection - look at whether you have
a proxy set (or not set as appropriate, whether you are looking for a
non-existant dns serveror just swear loudly (the latter won't fix the
prob but you may feel better)

 

Good luck

 

Kevin Prince
Adaptive Technology Consultant
Technology Employment and Awareness Division Royal New Zealand
Foundation of the Blind Te Tuapapa o te Hunga Kapo o Aotearoa

96 Bristol St
Christchurch
Phone: +64-3-375-4333
Fax: +64-3-355-9151
Mobile: +64-27-245-6687
For Adaptive Technology Helpdesk enquiries: call 0800-24-33-33
Website: http://www.rnzfb.org.nz <http://www.rnzfb.org.nz/>  

From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Jim
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 11:54 AM
To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: A Baffling Question

 

Hi Tom,

 

I didn't mess with the router at all.  It's like it went from one day to
the next.  Restrictions?  I had no idea that was even possible via a
router.  I've been way too busy this week to really mess with anything
that isn't absolutely necessary, and a router and perfectly good
internet connection was not going to be altered.

I appreciate your help anyway, Tom.  Keep it coming, please!

Jim

 

        ----- Original Message ----- 

        From: Tom Lange <mailto:trlange@xxxxxxxxxxx>  

        To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

        Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 2:32 PM

        Subject: 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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