Unable to access virginwines.co.uk

[#1]

Today I am unable to access the Virgin Wines website from my Plusnet connection.  However, I am able to access it via my work VPN and on my mobile phone.

Traceroute shows the break is somewhere beyond the Plusnet network.  Please can you have a word with the relevant provider?

$ tracert www.virginwines.co.uk

Tracing route to www.virginwines.co.uk [213.35.2.255]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     3 ms     2 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    17 ms    15 ms    18 ms  <snipped>
  3    15 ms    16 ms    15 ms  172.17.4.190
  4    21 ms    41 ms    22 ms  172.17.10.226
  5    22 ms    23 ms    22 ms  be2.pcn-ir02.plus.net [195.166.129.166]
  6    22 ms    23 ms    25 ms  195.99.125.144
  7    24 ms    24 ms    23 ms  195.99.127.66
  8    23 ms    23 ms    22 ms  213.137.183.102
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10    40 ms    24 ms    30 ms  NAVISITE-IN.ear2.London2.Level3.net [195.50.118.194]
 11    23 ms    23 ms    24 ms  62.32.103.143
 12    28 ms    25 ms    25 ms  62.32.103.155
 13    24 ms    24 ms    24 ms  213.35.0.167
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 23     *        *        *     Request timed out.

[#2]

It looks like it was an issue with a transit provider we use. We've not been able to replicate the issue here so let us know if that's still a problem for you.

[#3]

Adam,

Is there a need to replicate? Do PN not have test processes for checking out such infrastructure? I note there's a topic over on the mail forum having similar symptoms ... but inbound to pop3.plus.net ... the trace dies in transit ... on the edge of BT's network.

[#4]

Thanks for the reply, but the fault is still happening...

tracert www.virginwines.co.uk

Tracing route to www.virginwines.co.uk [213.35.2.255]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     1 ms     2 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    16 ms    17 ms    15 ms  <snip>
  3    16 ms    15 ms    16 ms  172.17.4.190
  4    22 ms    23 ms    22 ms  172.17.10.226
  5    24 ms    23 ms    21 ms  be2.pcn-ir02.plus.net [195.166.129.166]
  6    22 ms    22 ms    21 ms  195.99.125.144
  7    24 ms    23 ms    24 ms  195.99.127.66
  8    23 ms    21 ms    23 ms  213.137.183.102
  9    24 ms    23 ms    22 ms  10-1-1.ear2.London2.Level3.net [212.187.139.177]
 10    24 ms    24 ms    24 ms  NAVISITE-IN.ear2.London2.Level3.net [195.50.118.194]
 11    41 ms    30 ms    29 ms  62.32.103.143
 12    24 ms    24 ms    23 ms  62.32.103.155
 13    27 ms    24 ms    24 ms  213.35.0.167
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.

[#5 · Accepted solution]

Hmm...

Having revisited this on my PC (instead of trying to read the detail on my phone) I note that the non-responsive hops are WITHIN the target IP address space...

• Target 213.35.2.255
• End of responses 213.35.0.167

It would not be unreasonable for servers along the path to not respond to ping probes.  I cannot get ping responses from the URL or IP address ... but I can connect to the website.  Non-response on pings here is not a factor in the problem being experienced.

Need to consider the possibility of age restricted browsing safe guarding.

Also http://www.virginwines.co.uk redirects to https://www.virginwines.co.uk - so you should also consider redirection inhibition as a potential cause.

[#6]

Thanks. They do seem to be blocking my PC.  It's not browser-specific, as Firefox, Chrome and IE all get blocked, but using a different PC I can get in no problem.   Odd.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[#7]

Given the additional information I'd be looking at AV software and / or cookies.

I do not see how a website can block a specific PC within your local network - your external IP address may be, but not an internal device.