The Shenanigan
I just finished another clash with my ISP (Internet Service Provider). It makes me wonder why I am putting up with their shenanigans. I was shut out from access to all my websites again. It’s another case where I had to do my own trouble shooting to figure out what was going on.
As you can read elsewhere, last weekend I installed and started playing with a Technical Trial version of Microsoft’s WIN 10 operating system. I installed it stand alone on my “Sandbox” hacking and test experimental machine I use for playing with operation systems and new applications. Crashing it is a regular thing for me to do when I start testing limits.
As a system test I decided a good test for WIN 10 running on “sandbox” was to use it to run a total backup of all my remote files from all my active websites. It would require downloading about 800 GB of files from my ISP servers. This would require many hours of run time.
I got about 80% of the files copied, several hours per day over several days, when suddenly I lost contact with my account with my ISP. Using a browser I would receive the error message “Unable to connect to remote server.” At first I thought the ISP had a systems failure.
The next day I tried an access from work and all my websites were back. I was happy that the problem was fixed. That night back at home I tried to do some more backup and again all my websites were down. I thought the ISP problem had come back.
Back at work the next morning (yesterday), I looked at my websites and they are all working again. What the HEY! This is weird or what. Back home after work I try again and Rizzel Frits! No access again.
Now it hits me. My home IP address is blocked! I do a tracer route and I can see I am reaching Columbus, Ohio (where my ISP is located) and then the path dies on their server doorstep. Those babies from unwed mothers have my IP blocked!
I craft a kindly and well worded service ticket to my ISP about my “discovery” and after several exchanges and an hour or two of try this and that, the support person finally agrees that my ISP has been blocked “by the server firewall” and he would get technical to look at it. I thought I was talking to “technical” but that must be separate from “support”…
A few minutes later all my sites become available again. No Reason given as to why my IP address would be blocked by the firewall. I had carefully word crafted my original service ticket that I thought and blamed some one or some THING had blocked my IP. It was my “save face” escape clause for my ISP, as all I wanted was my IP to be unblocked.
What I think happened was my heavy FTP activity backing up all my files with my test of WIN 10, was viewed by someone or something at the server as a systems attack. So the block was put on my IP address. Downloading files by FTP backup is supposed to be a “normal” activity.
At first I had thought it was something I had done or was caused by the WIN 10 install. When the problem persisted, I had to dig deeper. I was correct in my diagnosis and I was able to prove my case. If it wasn’t so much fun I guess I would have to hate solving problems… 🙂