Fasm board is frequently down

[drhowarddrfine]

I've been trying to access them for several days but only got in a couple of times.  I haven't seen any posts there saying they've had any problems so I wonder if it's just my area or if others are having problems.  I wouldn't think it was me since I can get everywhere else.

[hutch--]

Doc,

Comes up OK here in OZ.

[drhowarddrfine]

It's been fine since Friday or Saturday but for two solid weeks I was only in a couple of times.  I was told, elsewhere, that they have this problem occasionally but no one commented on a post I put there about it.

[Mark Jones]

Doc, when this happens open up a command prompt and type in:

ping www.thewebsiteinquestion.com

... bunch of stuff is reported, but write down the IP address like 212.23.51.8 or whatever

tracert 212.23.51.8

... this shows each "hop" taken to reach that destination. At least one hop probably will not be responding, and this is where the problem is.

That's how to find out where the problem is, wether it's close to you or right up to their end.

[drhowarddrfine]

Yes.  I know. 
It's their host, powweb. 

[hutch--]

The database server seems to be broken at Powweb, the archive for the old version of the forum is hosted on one of the powweb servers and its down as well at the moment. I am a fast learner, when the powweb hosting became unreliable a long time ago I moved the forum to England as I already had a good shell account there and it has continued to be very reliable.

Ordinary http transfer from powweb still seems to run OK but I would not hold my breath about how long it will stay that way.

[Vortex]

I can access without any problem, the board looks OK.

[Ghirai]

Just a quick sidenote, traceroute will somewhat frequently timeout on certain hops, even if the ip in question is alive.
This is because some routers on the way drop ICMP packets (and depending on the implementation, traceroute sometimes also uses UDP packets, high ports, which are often blocked by firewalls).

Also, if a hop is not responding and the next ones do, everything should be ok  :P

[drhowarddrfine]

As I said before, they frequently have problems with their host.

[BogdanOntanu]

Yes, I also experience often slowdowns of FASM board access here in Romania.

I assume it depends on the path and server loads.

It comes slow or very slow in 50% of the cases while it works pretty fast in 25% of the cases.

However MASM board is always fast to access.

[sinsi]

Just to let anyone know, the fasm board was hacked and passwords stolen - if you're a member, maybe time to change your password?