# Help!!! Blocked from the SDMB **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [June 4, 2005, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-blocked-from-the-sdmb/306940 "2005-06-04T23:08:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bean\_Counter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/db5fbb/32.png) [@Bean\_Counter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bean_Counter)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2005, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-blocked-from-the-sdmb/306940/21 "2005-06-07T17:13:18Z")
It there a way to look up a website’s IP address? I am having a similar problem. My computer at work easily accesses a certain website while my home computer always gets the “timed out” message. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2005, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-blocked-from-the-sdmb/306940/22 "2005-06-07T17:39:27Z")
Open a command window (DOS prompt for us old-timers) type: “ping [straightdope.com](http://straightdope.com)” without the quotation marks You should get data like this returned to you: > [@](#): > > Pinging [straightdope.com](http://straightdope.com) [69.20.125.245] with 32 by > > Reply from 69.20.125.245: bytes=32 time=88ms TTL=48 > Reply from 69.20.125.245: bytes=32 time=88ms TTL=48 > Reply from 69.20.125.245: bytes=32 time=85ms TTL=48 > Reply from 69.20.125.245: bytes=32 time=88ms TTL=48 > > Ping statistics for 69.20.125.245: > Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% l > Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: > Minimum = 85ms, Maximum = 88ms, Average = 87ms Then type [http://69.20.125.245](http://69.20.125.245) into the address bar of your browser and hit return. ---
**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2005, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-blocked-from-the-sdmb/306940/23 "2005-06-07T18:50:25Z")
To further complicate things, the http://[ipaddress] trick won’t work if the site is set up as a shared virtual host. With some dirt-cheap webhosting packages, you don’t get an IP address of your own. The webhost will do some fancy server configuration, and tell Apache to redirect requests to a particular server account based on the domain name. I was once working on a site for a friend, who had signed up for a hosting package at something like five bucks a month. Since things were just starting up, there were DNS propagation issues, so I pointed my browser to the IP address rather than the domain name. Turns out it was a shared IP, and the default account for that address featured a large, “artitistic” jpeg of a bareass naked dude touching himself. Naturally, I was doing this on my lunch hour at work. You can imagine my delight. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-blocked-from-the-sdmb/306940.md?page=1)