Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
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Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
26-05-2019 11:07 AM
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Hi,
A couple of years ago I set up my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site to pull a set of subscription news feeds into the website. I've just noticed that these feeds stop working at the start of year. I've just tested the configuration and it errors with message "cURL error 7: Failed connect to www.legalrss.co.uk:80", I've tested the feeds from a test site not hosted by PlusNet and they work there.
I guess something has changed in the CGI or network setup?

Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
26-05-2019 12:08 PM
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@DMD-LAW - Welcome to the Forum.
The feeds you're using, are by your own admission subscription, and with the error you are getting this tells me that your subscription has in fact expired.
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
26-05-2019 8:40 PM
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Hi,
The URI of the feed on LegalRSS contains the subscription details (which I did not post for obvious reasons), as I said it works from another hosting platform.

Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
27-05-2019 7:59 AM
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OK, have you tried changing the URl to use the HTTPS protocol?
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
27-05-2019 9:50 AM - edited 27-05-2019 9:51 AM
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Hi,
Thanks for the suggestion, both HTTP and HTTPS work on my alternate hosting platform, neither work on PlusNet...

Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
27-05-2019 10:03 AM
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Fair enough, but worth a try if nothing else. I don't have Plusnet CGI so I can't help but maybe @MauriceC can help.
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
27-05-2019 2:07 PM
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Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
27-05-2019 6:25 PM
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Hi @DMD-LAW
Sorry that I cannot be of direct help, I've not used my CGI space since it migrated to Hostopia.
I have done a bit of research and this link may be of help.
Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
02-06-2019 7:27 PM
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Hi,
Been doing a little investigation. tested I could resolve the dns entry in php...
[code]
<?php
function dns_lookup($domainname) {
$sdip = gethostbyname($domainname );
$sddomain = gethostbyaddr($sdip);
print "<p>Requested FQDN : $domainname<br/>";
print "IP: $sdip<br/>";
print "Domain: $sddomain<br/></p>";
}
# initial test
dns_lookup("www.microsoft.com");
dns_lookup("www.google.co.uk");
dns_lookup("www.plus.net");
dns_lookup("www.dmd-law.co.uk");
dns_lookup("www.legalrss.co.uk");
?>
Got the following results
Requested FQDN : www.microsoft.com
IP: 23.212.229.47
Domain: a23-212-229-47.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com
Requested FQDN : www.google.co.uk
IP: 172.217.17.131
Domain: ams15s30-in-f3.1e100.net
Requested FQDN : www.plus.net
IP: 212.159.9.2
Domain: portal.plus.net
Requested FQDN : www.dmd-law.co.uk
IP: 91.136.8.9
Domain: hostedc50.megawebservers.eu
Requested FQDN : www.legalrss.co.uk
IP: 104.31.83.145
Domain: 104.31.83.145
Next I will try opening a connection...
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
03-06-2019 11:22 AM
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Hi @DMD-LAW, thanks for getting back to us.
IIMH, hosting isn't one of my strong points and so I've raised the issue to our hosting admin team to see if they're able to assist.
I expect a response within the next 3-5 working days (usually much quicker than this) at which point I'll update this thread.
Please let us know if you need any further assistance in the meantime.
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
03-06-2019 2:00 PM
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Hi,
Thanks for getting back to me.. Here some more information.. Very interesting....
[code]
<?php
function dns_lookup($domainname) {
$sdip = gethostbyname($domainname );
$sddomain = gethostbyaddr($sdip);
print "<p>Requested FQDN : $domainname<br/>";
print "IP: $sdip<br/>";
print "Domain: $sddomain<br/></p>";
}
function get_curl( $url, $useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1', $loop = 10, $javascript_loop = 0, $timeout = 15 ) {
print "<p>Initialise curl for url $url<br/>";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, "" );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, true );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false ); # required for https urls
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $timeout );
curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, 10 );
$content = curl_exec( $ch );
$reslen = strlen($content);
print "Curl result len $reslen;<br/>";
curl_close( $ch );
print "</p>";
return $content;
}
# initial test
dns_lookup("www.microsoft.com");
get_curl("www.microsoft.com");
dns_lookup("www.google.co.uk");
get_curl("www.google.co.uk");
dns_lookup("www.plus.net");
get_curl("www.plus.net");
dns_lookup("www.dmd-law.co.uk");
get_curl("www.dmd-law.co.uk");
dns_lookup("www.legalrss.co.uk");
get_curl("www.legalrss.co.uk");
?>
results....
Requested FQDN : www.microsoft.com
IP: 23.212.229.47
Domain: a23-212-229-47.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com
Initialise curl for url www.microsoft.com
Curl result len 172008;
Requested FQDN : www.google.co.uk
IP: 172.217.17.99
Domain: ams15s29-in-f3.1e100.net
Initialise curl for url www.google.co.uk
Curl result len 11377;
Requested FQDN : www.plus.net
IP: 212.159.9.2
Domain: portal.plus.net
Initialise curl for url www.plus.net
Curl result len 101735;
Requested FQDN : www.dmd-law.co.uk
IP: 91.136.8.9
Domain: hostedc50.megawebservers.eu
Initialise curl for url www.dmd-law.co.uk
Curl result len 34435;
Requested FQDN : www.legalrss.co.uk
IP: 104.31.83.145
Domain: 104.31.83.145
Initialise curl for url www.legalrss.co.uk
Curl result len 0;
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
03-06-2019 2:43 PM
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Hi @DMD-LAW,
Thank you for providing this additional information. We'll pass this on to assist with the investigation.
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
29-06-2019 1:07 PM
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Hi,
Any update on this?
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
29-06-2019 7:16 PM
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Hi @DMD-LAW,
I'm sorry that you've not yet received an update on this. Our network team responded to the ticket here on 16/06 and a notification of this should have been sent to the contact email address on the account.
The team raised this to Hostopia - the third party that hosts our CGI - and received the following response from them:
" Please be informed that we do not support coding concerns. Kindly review your code or contact your current website developer in order to resolve this. Thank you for understanding on this matter, we value your cooperation. We have now closed the ticket in regard to this matter. If you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will be happy to continue working with you "
Re: Accessing Internet site from my Plusnet Hosting (CGI) site
30-06-2019 1:34 PM
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Hi,
I've updated the ticket with the following feedback.
"The implication that this is somehow a coding issue is ridiculous. PHP dose not control the underlying network software stack and to have gone to the effort of writing additional code to provide this is a network/platform issue and have that then thrown back at me is extremely frustrating.
Please escalate this ticket back to Hostopia underlining the fact that I have clearly demonstrated this NOT a software development issue."
Having worked with outsourced vendors for many years, this has all the classic hallmarks of a support team being driven to close tickets as quickly as possible by SLA's and KPI's. As the ticket talk about code, close it as we don't support that.
I do expect more from Plusnet to ensure these tickets are fully investigated.
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