Unable to connect to one site

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Level 1

71 points

Unable to connect to one site

I'm having the strangest problem and hoping someone can help. One site will not connect through my cable modem and Apple Airport Time Capsule Base Station. Only one site, and it happens to be one of my largest clients. This site always times out giving an error that it is "unable to connect to server."

The site works perfectly on all browsers when I switch from WiFi to my phone's hotspot to provide my connection.

It works perfectly on all browsers when I use a public WiFi network like Starbucks.

But it won't work at all from any of my devices when connected to my home WiFi network which involves a 300mbps cable modem and the Airport router. All other sites work great.

The cable modem is bridged so that the router is providing the network. Router speed is consistently in the 300mpbs range.

I've tried every approach I can think of to resolve this and I'm out of ideas. I tried deleting the ARP cache and the routing tables. I unplugged both the router and modem and let them sit for 30 minutes to clear out any residual voltage and restarted them. No joy.

This problem happens with both WiFi and hardwired cat 5 connections. It applies to all iMacs, Mac Pro and the Macbook Pro as well as my iPhone. So it's not a browser issue nor an OS X issue local to any one machine. It has to be the router. For the life of me I can't understand how one site can be blocked like this by the router.

Do I maybe need to do a factory reset on the Airport Base Station and re-create the network from scratch? If so will I lose my Time Machine backups?

Any help is appreciated.

Posted on Feb 1, 2019 2:38 PM

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Answer 1

Bob Timmons

Level 10

185,096 points

Feb 1, 2019 2:57 PM in response to Adwiz

It has to be the router.

Logic would say that this is the case, but based on the same experience(s) that I have had, it is not.

It is the site that is blocking the connection from your router........because it thinks that you are spamming them, so they have "blacklisted" the IP address and/or the MAC Address or ID of your router.

Get with the tech support folks at the site and ask them to check their blocked connection list and explain the situation to them. They may ask you for your router's IP address......which is displayed if you open AirPort Utility and click on the Time Capsule and look in the small window that appears.

They may also ask for the MAC Address of the Time Capsule, which is the same thing as the Ethernet ID that you see when you hover your mouse over the name of the Time Capsule in the same small window that you use to see the IP address. The MAC address or Ethernet ID will always have a form of xx : xx : xx : xx : xx : xx. This special ID never changes, no matter what changes you might make on the Time Capsule.

When the site removes the block of your Time Capsule router, you will be able to access the site again.

Do I maybe need to do a factory reset on the Airport Base Station and re-create the network from scratch?

It won't hurt to do this, but it also won't help in my experience, since the ID characteristics of the Time Capsule remain the same.

If so will I lose my Time Machine backups?

No, since only the network settings on the Time Capsule reset back to defaults. The data on the Time Capsule hard drive will not be affected. But, as I said, the internal ID of the Time Capsule will not change, and the site is blocking the Time Capsule ID.

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Answer 2

Adwiz Author

Level 1

71 points

Feb 1, 2019 3:33 PM in response to Bob Timmons

Great answer! Thanks so much. I'm the webmaster for that site and knew that my IP address was white listed at the Wordpress level but didn't think about the server itself so this caught me by surprise. I was working on an eNewsletter template which uses URL references for images and I guess the constant access to those images over several hours from my computer fooled the server into thinking it was being spammed.

Appreciate your help.

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Unable to connect to one site

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