# Email/webhosting help

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-webhosting-help/454418>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 27, 2008, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-webhosting-help/454418 "2008-06-27T09:56:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![DCTrekkie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dctrekkie/32/18862_2.png) [@DCTrekkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCTrekkie)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-webhosting-help/454418/1 "2008-06-27T09:56:15Z")

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We’ve got a problem with the emails/website at work and as I’m the only one who knows anything about computers it’s been left to me to fix it. I’ve tried everything I can think of so i’m hoping someone here might be able to help.

We have a small website, hosted by Nethosted , and we also have our email through them. We then have a program on our server ([Officemail](http://www.burrotech.com/officemail.php)) that collects the email from nethosted’s servers and distributes it to people in the office i.e. sales to me, sales and accounts to Accounts and everything to the M.D.

The last few days our server hasn’t been able to connect to nethosted’s servers, and we can’t access our website from any of the computers in the office. We also can’t access any other websites on this particular server at nethosted, but we can access sites on their other servers, as well as the rest of the internet.

I’ve checked our firewall and everything looks normal, we hadn’t changed anything anyway so it shouldn’t have affected anything. Nethosted have also tried turning off their firewall for a few minutes whilst I tried to connect, but I still couldn’t.

I can access our website perfectly well from home, and we can access our emails through [mail2web](http://www.mail2web.com) , so it’s not that their server is down. For some reason we did get a connection for an hour or so Wednesday afternoon, but then it went again.

Nethosted got me to do a couple of tracert’s to see if they could see what the problem was, but I have no idea what they mean. I’ll paste them here incase they say anything important.  
Tracing route to [uranus.solardns.com](http://uranus.solardns.com) [85.13.251.106] \<-nethosted server  
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 14 ms \<1 ms \<1 ms 192.168.0.1  
2 37 ms 23 ms 23 ms [claranet1-hg2.ilford.broadband.bt.net](http://claranet1-hg2.ilford.broadband.bt.net) [217.41.128.73]  
3 22 ms 21 ms 30 ms 217.41.128.1  
4 22 ms 26 ms 26 ms 217.41.128.110  
5 127 ms 112 ms 149 ms [t40-dr1-ge-0-3-7.router.uk.clara.net](http://t40-dr1-ge-0-3-7.router.uk.clara.net) [195.8.68.235]  
6 36 ms 30 ms 25 ms [g1-1-4-t40-cr1.router.uk.clara.net](http://g1-1-4-t40-cr1.router.uk.clara.net) [195.8.68.69]  
7 26 ms 24 ms 24 ms [ten2-0-0-t6-cr2.router.uk.clara.net](http://ten2-0-0-t6-cr2.router.uk.clara.net) [195.8.68.118]  
8 23 ms 22 ms 24 ms [g2-0-t6-br1.router.uk.clara.net](http://g2-0-t6-br1.router.uk.clara.net) [195.157.6.202]  
9 23 ms 24 ms 23 ms [linx-gw1.enta.net](http://linx-gw1.enta.net) [195.66.226.151]  
10 26 ms 28 ms 24 ms [te4-4.telehouse-north.core.enta.net](http://te4-4.telehouse-north.core.enta.net) [87.127.246.121]  
11 27 ms 28 ms 23 ms [te5-3.telehouse-east2.core.enta.net](http://te5-3.telehouse-east2.core.enta.net) [87.127.236.37]  
12 28 ms 24 ms 24 ms [ge-1-2-0-35.core1.sta.lon2.coreix.net](http://ge-1-2-0-35.core1.sta.lon2.coreix.net) [78.33.11.218]  
13 24 ms 27 ms 24 ms [ge-4-1-56.dist7b.sta.lon2.coreix.net](http://ge-4-1-56.dist7b.sta.lon2.coreix.net) [85.13.192.22]  
14 \* \* \* Request timed out.  
15 \* \* \* Request timed out.

Tracing route to [google.com](http://google.com) [64.233.167.99]  
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 \<1 ms \<1 ms \<1 ms 192.168.0.1  
2 23 ms 23 ms 21 ms [claranet1-hg2.ilford.broadband.bt.net](http://claranet1-hg2.ilford.broadband.bt.net) [217.41.128.73]  
3 21 ms 22 ms 20 ms 217.41.128.1  
4 24 ms 22 ms 23 ms 217.41.128.106  
5 25 ms 25 ms 22 ms [t40-dr1-ge-0-3-7.router.uk.clara.net](http://t40-dr1-ge-0-3-7.router.uk.clara.net) [195.8.68.235]  
6 26 ms 23 ms 26 ms [g1-1-4-t40-cr1.router.uk.clara.net](http://g1-1-4-t40-cr1.router.uk.clara.net) [195.8.68.69]  
7 25 ms 26 ms 25 ms [ten2-0-0-t6-cr2.router.uk.clara.net](http://ten2-0-0-t6-cr2.router.uk.clara.net) [195.8.68.118]  
8 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms [g2-0-t6-br1.router.uk.clara.net](http://g2-0-t6-br1.router.uk.clara.net) [195.157.6.202]  
9 22 ms 23 ms 25 ms [google-lon.google.com](http://google-lon.google.com) [195.157.6.74]  
10 24 ms 23 ms 24 ms 209.85.252.76  
11 96 ms 117 ms 95 ms 64.233.175.213  
12 105 ms 101 ms 102 ms 209.85.248.216  
13 135 ms 133 ms 134 ms 216.239.46.224  
14 126 ms 125 ms 127 ms 72.14.238.89  
15 119 ms 126 ms 125 ms 64.233.175.26  
16 120 ms 121 ms 129 ms [py-in-f99.google.com](http://py-in-f99.google.com) [64.233.167.99]

Trace complete.  
It looks like our connection is being lost after going through our ISP (claranet) which would rule out our firewall/router, but I’m just guessing what the tracert stuff means, I could be completely wrong.

Any ideas

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-webhosting-help/454418/2 "2008-06-27T18:33:47Z")

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This probably has an answer that’s not opinion.

Moved from IMHO to GQ.

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**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-webhosting-help/454418/3 "2008-06-27T20:32:06Z")

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First, I’d try to isolate whether this is an issue with the Internet connection or with settings on your local machines. To do this, try the following:

1. Bring a laptop from somewhere and hook it up directly to your Internet connection at work. See if it reaches [uranus.solardns.com](http://uranus.solardns.com)

2. Connect your primary PC at work through a different Internet connection. e.g. dial-up or cellular broadband wireless card like [http://b2b.vzw.com/broadband/bbapccard.html](http://b2b.vzw.com/broadband/bbapccard.html) (try to borrow this from someone if possible)

If #1 works, then you know it’s a configuration/corruption issue with your local machine settings. If #2 works, then you know it’s an issue with your Internet configuration/connection/settings/ISP.

Once you narrow it down, it’ll be easier to get to the root cause.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DCTrekkie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dctrekkie/32/18862_2.png) [@DCTrekkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCTrekkie)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/email-webhosting-help/454418/4 "2008-07-22T07:58:08Z")

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Thank you for the suggestions **xash** , sorry I didn’t thank you at the time but I didn’t have time to post on here for a few weeks afterwards.

I tried connecting a different computer, and had exactly the same problems but I can’t test any of the computers on a different connection. A couple of days later though everything came back and worked fine. Until yesterday when it all went again. The only answer I got from the hosting company was that there was a routing problem between our ISP and their servers, but they said they couldn’t help any more than that.