Forbidden website

Well, it is not really a forbidden website. :) About six months back I had accessed RafaelWolf.com - Technical blog of things I'm working on or things I've done in the past. and read his technical blogs. I had even referenced it in one of my threads in another forum.

For the last one or two months however, I have not been able to access the website and I get the following "Forbidden" message.



Google however shows a web page from this site which was cached as recently as 10 Jan 2011 - which means the website still exists and accessible.

I tried to access the page from my HTPC too but still forbidden. Tried Firefox - no luck.

Is there anything that I can do to access the site?

Works fine for me, I just checked :)

Are you using any Proxy servers?

I'm able to access the site. Are you using a company, school or organization connection? They may have blocked the site for some reason, intentionally or not.

James

No, it is my personal PC at home and I am the administrator. While my ISP gives a dynamic IP, my Netgear wireless modem/router is directly connected to my desktop and and the DHP server in it assigns a fixed IP like 198.168.0.3 based on its MAC no. Except that I keep playing with the DNS servers rarely, I have not installed any proxy servers etc.,

My ISP is BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, India).

I have by now tried to access the website from another wireless network at home (different phone line, different wireless modem but same ISP). Still forbidden.

I have also tried my EVDO (same ISP) with DNS automatically assigned by the ISP and then with OpenDNS in the settings. Both cases still forbidden.



Perhaps tomorrow, I shall try to access from a friend's PC but still the same ISP.

I am back to this thread. Today when I was discussing this problem with a friend, I was told that geographical blocking is in vogue with many servers.

But why would a technical blog site be blocked on Geography? This couldn't be true atleast with this site. I am inclined to go with Ezioauditore who has confirmed that he could log on to the site with his Airtel (another ISP in India) connection. So may be I have to take up the matter with my ISP but it is as good as hitting a stonewall.

My friend also suggested that I could use some "hide your IP" program and try to access the site. I caught hold of the first one in my google search, installed the three day free trial version and voila, I was able to access www.rafaelwolf.com though access was very slow since it was going through some proxy server in U.S.A or Canada. Well this was only an experiment, but then to my chagrin I could not access any website normally even after closing the program and restarting the PC.. Even uninstalling it in toto with Revo Uninstaller did not bring any relief. Finally I had to resort to a system restore to get back to my normal browsing.

Of course there may be some good and proven programs for hiding IP which others here may be using or aware of but revealing such things may not be appropriate here. If they so choose they can send a PM to me. A good proxy on my comp could also be a solution but my knowledge on this is next to nil.:) Any suggestions on circumventing this problem is most welcome.