On a number of occasions, I have been unable to upload or download data bundles for the BIONIC screensaver.
Through the use of ping, tracert, etc I have a=scertained that the Berkeley sefvvers are unreachable.
I originally contacted my ISP who, through apparent in-action seemed to fix the problem (after a week). They mumbled something about "dns reverse".

I t happened again last week. The ISP ,support people now say that the problem is not with teir systems, but rather

By the looks of it, it seems that their IP might have been applied on a temporary block/restriction from accessing the said webserver. Unfortunately we can't have a solid proof of that as we have no access on the firewall logs of the mentioned web server."

Is this a problem with your servers?
I would really appreciate some help with this recurring problem.

During the last week or so there have been a number of server issues that may have resulted in you getting those messages. Only time will tell if they have been fully resolved.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

OK, good to know.
I will stop abusing my ISP
:-)

Bookmark http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_status.html, it's a page that will give the status of all servers for the project. If for instance you see that the database servers are off line, or the scheduling/scheduler server, that means the project isn't reachable.

Of course, if such a catastrophe happens that the main database server resets itself and isn't allowing anyone to get onto it (accompanied by the message You don't have permission to access /forum_forum.php on this server.) the server status page won't be reachable either.

In any case, all those are happening at the project, there is no need for your ISP to do anything. Most of the times when only one website isn't reachable, it's due to something having happened to that website. If all websites are unreachable, it's time to ask the ISP and check cables, DNS server settings and such things.

One further helpful site is http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

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One of the websites I visited during my problems was

http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/setiathome.berkeley.edu.html

It reported that all the servers were fine and that any probnlems I had connecting were my problems.
This was not helpful.
Gibven that you have now stated that connection problems to the servers at your end, am I to understand that this particular website is inaccutrate and does not reflect the status of the servers?

That site does nothing more than a ping check to the web address you enter. If the site responds, it tells you that it is up. It doesn't tell you if all services are running.

I wouldn't say the site was inaccurate. I would say sites like that are a tool with a singular purpose, and in this case the expectation didn't fit the purpose.

As you have found the "is it up" type service can only tell you if a website is pingable, which is a good starting point, but it doesn't give the whole story, which is where the "status page" comes into play. It not only gives the status of the various servers (the green, orange and red bars on the left hand side of the page, but how old the data is (near the top on the left hand side is a date and time stamp for when the page was last updated - the normal cycle time is about 20 minutes), on the right side of the page is information about the work flow, of interest here are the "replica" information, if the replica server is off-line, or significantly behind the master then the system as a whole is either having problems, or is recovering from them (anything more than a few tens of seconds is "not good news").

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?