I have been unable to reach this site from work since this past weekend, and I can't tell whether it has to do with the new servers for RHP or whether the restriction is coming from the firewall at work or what. I looked through the forums a bit and I don't see anyone else reporting anything similar. I was on vacation last week, so I was not trying to reach RHP from work since about Jan 26, but at that point I had no problems. I returned yesterday (Monday), and since then I have gotten timeout messages from my browser whenever I try to access RHP from work. The browser also times out trying to reach chessatwork.com.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what might be going on? I am also not receiving move notification emails anymore, though it seems I am not the only one having that problem.
Thanks so much, this is by far the best chess site on the internet!!
I am still waiting on word from IT people about accessing the website, but I did hear back about emails. Our email person said he checked the logs and there were no records of any incoming emails from robot@redhotpawn.com to me or anyone else. He said that if there were any in the future, they would not be blacklisted. So, I think the problem is not here at my University, it is either at the RHP end or somewhere in-between. I noticed another person posted the same problem (about website access) above.
The lack of email is actually not that big of a deal for me, I can switch to a non-school account, but I'm mentioning it again because it might be related to the website access problem, which is more of a problem for me. In case it's helpful, the domain for my email is "seas.rochester.edu" and I'm located at the University of Rochester in upstate New York.
To summarize the access problem again, my browser times out whenever I try to access RHP from work. I use Firefox on my laptop primarily, but I've tried IE and other computers and get the same behavior. It happens from anywhere on the campus network, but never at home through my cable internet provider (RoadRunner through Time Warner). I don't think it's the university blocking it, but I haven't gotten direct confirmation of that yet. I get identical behavior with timeforchess.com, etc.
I have been having the same problems. RHP will not work at any universities or libraries in my entire city area! It does work on home computers though, but being as young and typicly poor as I am, and owning a home e-net comp is definately out of the question, I don't know if I can manage without a lot of timeouts in the future. I asked the libraries and universities in question, if the site was blacklisted, or if my card had removed priveledge rights to RHP, but the admin couldn't join the site, even after disabling all blacklisted sites temporarily, and she had a master card/account. The problem is definately an odd anomoly with RHP server itself, and it has happened coincidentally at the time of the new servers. This subtle problem can be overlooked and may lose subscripers in the hundreds Russ! It's so odd, I don't know what's wrong, and I'm sorry Russ, I can't really point you where to look. I did take some IT courses long ago and even this eludes me, it seems like the servers simply do not like massive large e-net networks. The universities and libraries in my city of 300K are all on one network, so you can only imagine how this "subtle" problem may not be subtle for long.
I have found it extremely slow since the ugprade., not everytime mind you, but most of the time.
Sometimes, like today for example., I click on something, like a forum thread, or my games., and go do something else while I wait for the page to appear.. the progress bar moves as if its not finding the site, then suddenly it will refresh. The delay is not in waiting for the page to paint, but what seems like resolving the host name, or finding the site
MIODude
Anyone finding the site slow, can you please 'ping' redhotpawn.com for me and report back the results.
If you do not know how to do this, please do the following.
Press your start button.
Select 'run'.
Type 'cmd' and then press OK.
In the black window, type 'ping redhotpawn.com', (then press return) and then copy the results here. Thanks. (If you could do this when you think the site is slow, that would help.)
Thanks,
-Russ
Example result : Reply from 72.3.131.164: bytes=32 time=132ms TTL=47
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>ping redhotpawn.com
Pinging redhotpawn.com [72.3.131.164] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 72.3.131.164: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=50
Reply from 72.3.131.164: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=50
Reply from 72.3.131.164: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=50
Reply from 72.3.131.164: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=50
Ping statistics for 72.3.131.164:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 60ms, Average = 52ms
Update: I can now access RHP from work. I don't know what happened, and I don't think anyone ever changed anything at the University, but I began to be able to access RHP again yesterday. So, for me anyway, the problem seems to be solved, and I would encourage Exiled to try again in case the problem magically resolved itself everywhere.
On the other topic which has come up in this thread, the site is definitely sometimes slower than before the server change. Sometimes, but not always. It's fine now, but I'll ping and post next time I notice it's slow.
I think we now have an answer to the recent problems. It appears our new IP address was once in a range that some people recommended should be blocked by routers.
This situation changed in August last year, but not all routers have been updated. A nightmare to resolve. Can anyone not able to access the site please send me the results of a tracert on redhotpawn.com. I can then try to tackle them one by one, if at all possible.
-Russ
From a DOS pompt, type :
tracert redhotpawn.com
Thanks.