Why can't I get to Live Journal from my home computer?

June 9, 2004 2:51 PM

An embarrassing question: why can't I get to Live Journal from my home computer? [MI]

I've been only able to get it to load after multiple tries for the past week or so but now I just get a "network or DNS error". I can get to it from work, so I assume it isn't down. It won't work on either Netscape or IE.

I guess what I'm asking is, is this something I can do anything about or do I have to call Cox cable and go through voicemail hell?

posted by JoanArkham to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Related question: Why can't I visit http://www.wordplayer.com from home on my Safari browser? It switches over to its numeric URL, but then even that fails to load.
posted by blueshammer at 3:00 PM on June 9, 2004

LiveJournal's kind of a bad site to daignose any problem with, as their servers are notorious for being crap. I often have to hit the reload button several times for LJ to actually reload.

... or at least so I've heard... because I don't use LiveJournal or anything...
posted by falconred at 3:11 PM on June 9, 2004

Can you access LiveJournal from its IP (ie. does this link work)?
posted by reklaw at 3:20 PM on June 9, 2004

Have you downloaded any kind of ad-blocking anything recently? Some of these work by feeding your computer false dns info for long lists of supposedly well-known ad servers. But the lists they come with can be too broad, and, sometimes, breaking the ads breaks the whole site.
posted by scarabic at 4:02 PM on June 9, 2004

I had a similiar problem once -- I couldn't access two sites that I owned/ran. Rather, I couldn't access them from my HOME computer -- any other computer on the planet could access them just fine.

Never did figure out the problem, unfortunately, and I let both sites fade into obscurity. But I'd still be interested in understanding how it happened.
posted by davidmsc at 4:21 PM on June 9, 2004

You use a router? I had strange problems getting to epinions with my old router, until I updated the firmware, which magically solved the problem. I looked into the firmware changelog and it had some fixes for default MTU Size and UDP forwarding, so it's possible one of those issues could be at fault.
posted by Hackworth at 4:56 PM on June 9, 2004

Response by poster: The IP doesn't work either. I've got pop-up blocking set up on Netscape, but I'm not doing any other ad blocking...and Live Journal doesn't have ads anyway. No router, just a direct connection via cable modem.

Cox has not been that helpful. They told me to make sure cookies were enabled, cache was cleaned out blah, blah, blah. I expect they will tell me to re-install my operating system next...
posted by JoanArkham at 7:17 PM on June 9, 2004

Do you have Norton Internet Security by any chance? I've been having the same problem today, but I found that I can get to livejournal if I disable NIS.
posted by amarynth at 7:57 PM on June 9, 2004

I once had a d-link router which randomly blocked sites I visited regularly. I finally noticed when it told me BBC News was offline - as if! First thing I do now when I can't reach a site is reset my (new) router.
posted by ascullion at 1:32 AM on June 10, 2004

Response by poster: Do you have Norton Internet Security by any chance?

Yes! I just figured out that was the problem myself. Now I'm dealing with Norton tech support. Do you know they want $30 to talk to them over the phone? That's how much I paid for the freaking program.
posted by JoanArkham at 3:09 AM on June 10, 2004

LJ to save the day! (ie, NIS problem fixed)
posted by jmd82 at 11:56 AM on June 10, 2004

Response by poster: w00t! Thanks all!
posted by JoanArkham at 12:02 PM on June 10, 2004