Problems accessing Spritesmind

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RetroGames
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Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by RetroGames » Fri Jan 22, 2016 1:45 am

I've been unable to access Spritesmind for a few days now. Doesn't matter if I browse to the forum or to the main gendev.spritesmind.net URL, either way my connection always times out. I tried both FireFox and Chrome on my PC, and I tried browsing on iOS, but I get the same connection time out error. I'm only logged on here now because I downloaded the Tor Browser! Anyone else been having problems like this? (I'm located in the USA.)

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by MrTamk1s » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:36 pm

RetroGames wrote:I've been unable to access Spritesmind for a few days now. Doesn't matter if I browse to the forum or to the main gendev.spritesmind.net URL, either way my connection always times out. I tried both FireFox and Chrome on my PC, and I tried browsing on iOS, but I get the same connection time out error. I'm only logged on here now because I downloaded the Tor Browser! Anyone else been having problems like this? (I'm located in the USA.)
Yes, I too am having this same problem. I'm also in the USA, and recently have only been able to get to either the site or the forums with a VPN (using it because this is a uni rental laptop, and I don't trust the university. Don't want to give them any excuses to get me in trouble.)
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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by ryanfaescotland » Fri Jan 22, 2016 10:01 pm

I'm in the UK, no issues here.

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by djcouchycouch » Sat Jan 23, 2016 1:03 am

Everything's fine from Canada!

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by RetroGames » Sun Jan 24, 2016 9:12 am

Still having issues accessing Spritesmind... :(
MrTamk1s wrote:Yes, I too am having this same problem. I'm also in the USA, and recently have only been able to get to either the site or the forums with a VPN (using it because this is a uni rental laptop, and I don't trust the university. Don't want to give them any excuses to get me in trouble.)
Maybe it's a problem at the level of the internet access provider. Any idea who your university uses? I'm on Comcast.

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by RetroGames » Tue Jan 26, 2016 7:17 am

I guess it must be my internet service. I used internet at someone else's house, got on Spritesmind OK. And they were on a different provider from me. Pretty strange.

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by ryanfaescotland » Tue Jan 26, 2016 7:44 am

Could be worth contacting your ISP, make sure they aren't deciding to police the internet for you.

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by RetroGames » Wed Jan 27, 2016 3:03 am

All of a sudden, the problem went away and I can access Spritesmind as usual. I didn't even have to contact my ISP. Odd business! But at least it's over. :D

MrTamk1s: Are you still having issues?

EDIT: I spoke too soon. Problems are back. Yay me. :roll:

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by MrTamk1s » Thu Jan 28, 2016 2:23 am

Maybe it's a problem at the level of the internet access provider. Any idea who your university uses? I'm on Comcast.
Don't know who the university uses (it's ~15mi away), but I can access the site from their desktop computers last I tried; however, at home, when I try to access from the uni rental laptop, it times out, on Firefox, IE, and also FireFox for Android (phone). We have Comcast. The internet is working perfectly elsewhere, except at Spritesmind (without VPN), and there is no detrimental weather right now to weaken the internet connection. It also times out on other family member's devices, which have never visited Spritesmind or have used a VPN. This timing out issue began ~<2 weeks ago on the uni rental laptop, which prior was able to visit the site. I believe this is either a router issue or Comcast being evil by policing.
RetroGames wrote:All of a sudden, the problem went away and I can access Spritesmind as usual. I didn't even have to contact my ISP. Odd business! But at least it's over. :D
MrTamk1s: Are you still having issues?
EDIT: I spoke too soon. Problems are back. Yay me. :roll:
Yep, still having issues. I could ask father later tomorrow if he has been getting any angry emails from the ISP recently, since he pays the bills. In the meantime, I'm cybersluething through the Router's logs to see find any red flags appear.

The internet in USA is scary :|.
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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by RetroGames » Thu Jan 28, 2016 6:52 am

MrTamk1s wrote:Don't know who the university uses (it's ~15mi away), but I can access the site from their desktop computers last I tried; however, at home, when I try to access from the uni rental laptop, it times out, on Firefox, IE, and also FireFox for Android (phone). We have Comcast. The internet is working perfectly elsewhere, except at Spritesmind (without VPN), and there is no detrimental weather right now to weaken the internet connection. It also times out on other family member's devices, which have never visited Spritesmind or have used a VPN. This timing out issue began ~<2 weeks ago on the uni rental laptop, which prior was able to visit the site.
The scenario you describe fits mine exactly. I'm pretty sure it's a Comcast thing, sounds too specific to be a coincidence.
MrTamk1s wrote:I believe this is either a router issue or Comcast being evil by policing.

[snip]

Yep, still having issues. I could ask father later tomorrow if he has been getting any angry emails from the ISP recently, since he pays the bills. In the meantime, I'm cybersluething through the Router's logs to see find any red flags appear.

The internet in USA is scary :|.
It's definitely possible that Comcast is filtering out Spritesmind. Seems like a silly idea, but I could imagine it. It wouldn't even have to be a "corporate" decision: in a big company, sometimes "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing". However, I doubt it's anything deliberate on their part. It could be an automated filtering process, and no one at the company is aware that it's happening at all. Like I said, for a while after I made my last post, I was able to connect to Spritesmind again without using Tor, so if they're trying to block it, they aren't trying very hard. I think it probably is a router issue - but with Comcast's routers, not ours. I'm hopeful the problem will take care of itself, but we'll see what happens. I wouldn't get worried about it too quickly. I don't think the internet is that much scarier here than it is anywhere else in the world. :wink:

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by ComradeOj » Thu Jan 28, 2016 7:22 am

Glad I'm not the only one...

I haven't been able to access the site for a few weeks, maybe a month. I can't access or even ping the site at all from my home network. It just times out. I thought maybe it was a DNS issue, but I can't even connect by typing in the site's IP address.

I can access the site from other networks, or at home trough the TOR browser.

For what it's worth, I'm also using comcast. Maybe they are blocking for some reason. Maybe a mistake?
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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by Mask of Destiny » Thu Jan 28, 2016 7:07 pm

Someone who is having this problem might want to run a traceroute (tracert on Windows). This should give you an idea of where the connection is dying.

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by ComradeOj » Fri Jan 29, 2016 12:29 am

Mask of Destiny wrote:Someone who is having this problem might want to run a traceroute (tracert on Windows). This should give you an idea of where the connection is dying.
Good idea. I just tried it. The results:

traceroute to gendev.spritesmind.net (213.186.33.40), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.257 ms 0.143 ms 0.152 ms
2 96.120.0.65 (96.120.0.65) 10.965 ms 11.159 ms 13.103 ms
3-30 * * *

Hmm.... I know 192.168.0.1 is my router. I looked up 96.120.0.65, and it seems to be comcast. AFIAK the * * * are all time-outs. I did a traceroute to sega-16.com to test, and it got past 96.120.0.65 and made all of it's hops until it got where it needed to go. Results were the same on linux and windows.

Maybe someone else that's having issues can try the same command.
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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by RetroGames » Fri Jan 29, 2016 1:33 am

ComradeOj wrote:traceroute to gendev.spritesmind.net (213.186.33.40), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.257 ms 0.143 ms 0.152 ms
2 96.120.0.65 (96.120.0.65) 10.965 ms 11.159 ms 13.103 ms
3-30 * * *
Same for me, except my Comcast router/server IP in the second hop is different.

I tried switching my tablet to public DNS servers. I can browse the web that way, but not to spritesmind. Once, it looked like my browser's progress bar loaded spritesmind halfway, but then it hung. Proxy servers are the only thing that works for me.

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Re: Problems accessing Spritesmind

Post by Mask of Destiny » Fri Jan 29, 2016 1:38 am

So just to make sure I tried doing a traceroute myself and it doesn't work either even though I have no problems reaching the site. ping also fails. It would appear that some router between here and the Spritesmind server is blackholing ICMP. This is sometimes done in the name of security, but it makes debugging this kind of issue a major PITA.

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