IE6 Unable to Access Any USPS Websites

[Guest]

I have IE6 with all the latest updates, Win98se. Recently, I have been
unable to access any websites within the US Postal Service (www.usps.com).
When I enter a web address, after a delay, I get the "Cannot find server"
page. I can access any other site normally. I checked with the USPS tech
folks. Their site is up an running normally. I also checked with my server,
Verizon. All is normal. I deleted all my cookies, reset my security
settings to default leves. Nothing seems to help. Can anyone here help?

Thanx in advance.

 

[Li Yuan]

Have tried "ping www.usps.com"? any result? Can't find that address or an ip
returned?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the response, Li. I ran the program. The response was "Request
Timed Out" multiple times. There was some statement at the end, but the
window closed before I could read it.

 

[Li Yuan]

Before unable to access USPS, did you do anything? Maybe what you had done
caused that, such as a system upgrade. If no, there may be something wrong with
the internet connection between your server and USPS'.

Click Run in your start menu, enter cmd, and click OK. Enter: tracert -d
www.usps.com. Copy the all the result here, ignoring all timeout messages. maybe
we could find something.

 

[Guest]

All good advice, Alex. No, I did not do any updates or installations prior
to this. I did a tracert -d. I got 11normal hops and then the following
message:

12 65.206.183.82 reports: Destination net unreachable.

I guess something is blocking the signal downline. What do you think?

Ralph

 

[Li Yuan]

I think you'd better call your isp. your connection to usps.com is normal.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

All good advice, Alex. No, I did not do any updates or installations prior
to this. I did a tracert -d. I got 11normal hops and then the following
message:

12 65.206.183.82 reports: Destination net unreachable.

I guess something is blocking the signal downline. What do you think?

Actually the most useful thing that tracert (or ping) can do for you
these days is show you the name/address resolution that is being
done for that name. So, getting the first message would be enough
and then you could have cancelled the rest of the report with Ctrl-c.

<example>
Tracing route to www.usps.com [56.0.134.24]
</example>

After that as you have seen tracert's ICMP packet was blocked
before it reached the target host. Many large sites are doing this
to guard themselves against the morons who use ping commands
to stage "Denial of Service exploits" against their sites.

So, provided your target address is the same as above
you have done all you can with either ping -n 1 or tracert.


The next connectivity check I would ask an NT user to do
would be to try using telnet to port 80. Unfortunately your OS
doesn't have a telnet command. However, you may have
something like HyperTerminal which does have a Winsock
interface and a prompt for a port which would allow you to do
the same thing. Once you establish a connection all you have to do
is figure out how to enter an HTTP GET request. If you're lucky
it may be as simple as typing GET /
(That's GET<space><slash><Enter>)

Of course if you have a different browser and it can connect to a site
which IE is not connecting with the above simulation procedure would
be unnecessary.


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
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