I’m in the middle of designing 2 websites, and the owner of one of them called me, to say that she cannot get to her site, and cannot get emails either.

I put www.janpowersfarmersmarkets.com.au into the address bar, but I get a familiar error message:

ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://janpowersfarmersmarkets.com/

The following error was encountered:

• Connection Failed

The system returned:

    (110) Connection timed out

The site you are trying to connect to may be down. This could be a network issue which will be resolved shortly. This could also mean that there is no webserver at the location you are trying to access. Please try the request again if you are sure you have the correct address and the remote webserver is up.

Please contact TPG Helpdesk or the cache administrator and quote your dialup/ADSL location and IP address if you feel this error is incorrect. If you are reporting this error to the cache administrator you must include this entire error message in your email. Without the correct details we may be unable to resolve your issue.

Your cache administrator is squid@tpgi.com.au

Generated 08/Apr/2007:10:22:57 +1000 by bri-nxg-pr5.tpgi.com.au

Now, Jan’s ISP is EIS, while I’m with TPG, so its unlikely to be both ISPs. 

So, I contact the hosting company, thinking that they might have done something… as I just moved Jans website to this new hosting place (unlimited-space.com).

Anyway, they check their firewall, and many other settings, but cannot find a problem.

I also find (as does unlimited-space), that the website is visible from other sites around the world (I used proxify.com). And ftp also works well…

I ring TPG support, and I’m told to try using some IE proxy settings instead (proxy.tpg.com.au and proxy.cache.telstra.net, ports 3128 or 80)

Yes, the proxies work, so things are working for the moment. But in researching this, I find out that TPG uses “transparent” proxies for all their customers. Hey, I don’t mind, except it gets in the way when I update a website… it takes about 24 hours before the change is seen on my browser. TPG: please make your proxy servers a bit more intelligent.