Just for fun ... I've just reinitialised my hard drive ... repartitioned it ... and done a clean install of 10.4 and updated it to 10.4.2 via Software Update.

So there are some Apple servers I CAN connect to.

Even after doing this, however, when I try to connect to www.apple.com/au I'm getting:

Safari could not open the page “http://www.apple.com/au/” because the server stopped responding.

I tried your suggestions James, and this is the output I got (even to a non-techie like me it doesn't look good):

richard-kays-ibook-g4:~ rmkay$ curl --proxy '' --dump-header - -- output /dev/null http://www.apple.com/au/

curl: (7) couldn't connect to host

richard-kays-ibook-g4:~ rmkay$ telnet www.apple.com 80

Trying 17.112.152.32...
telnet: connect to address 17.112.152.32: Operation timed out
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

I'm going through the Fremantle exchange with Bigpond.

As I said before, I can connect with the iBook on Barking Owl's/ Fremantle Technology's free wireless network in the main street ... so it is not the iBook per se that is the problem.

Any suggestions?

RK


On 23/07/2005, at 9:37 AM, James Devenish wrote:

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
on Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 08:07:00AM +0800, Richard Kay wrote:

Time to hose the drive and reinstall Tiger.


I don't think it would be reasonable to jump to that conclusion. Different subscriber networks can route their traffic differently, and servers can choose to differentiate their traffic based on criteria such as client IP blocks. E.g., if Bigpond allocates you with an IP addresses that Apple services via a pool that is under unexpectedly high load, you may experience trouble that others don't. Likewise, Akamai might just be screwing with your head as usual (i.e., DNS problem). Remember how inconsistent and frustrating the traffic management of Software Update is? I wouldn't be surprised if it were currently the same story with the main website. Lacking any network diagnostics to prove otherwise (don't forget: web browsers are incredibly poor performers as
diagnostic tools), the last thing I'd suspect is my own computer.

If you are still having the problem, I predict it'd be easy to demonstrate it
is an Akamai-related issue. In the Terminal, type this on a line:
curl --proxy '' --dump-header - --output /dev/null http:// www.apple.com/au/ and then press Return. You might expect to see something like the excerpt at
the end of this e-mail. Alternatively, you might try
    telnet www.apple.com 80
in which case you might see something like this:
    Trying 17.112.152.32...
    Connected to www.apple.com.akadns.net.
    Escape character is '^]'.
(which will time out after a few seconds unless you know how to form an HTTP header). The three outcomes from the telnet attempt are that (a) www.apple.com has been converted to an IP address successfully (17.112.152.32 -- it may differ for you due to the way the system works, or if Bigpond has not yet received/propagated new AkaDNS information), and (b) that it corresponds to an Apple-sponsored server (www.apple.com.akadns.net.), and (c) that a connection has been made successfully ("connected"). Your web browser doesn't give you
this level of detail.

Here is the aforementioned output from curl:
_______________________________
% curl --proxy '' --dump-header - --output /dev/null http:// www.apple.com/au/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Age: 171
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 01:26:20 GMT
Content-Length: 11651
Content-Type: text/html
Expires: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 01:36:20 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=600
Connection: close
Server: Apache/1.3.29 (Darwin) PHP/4.3.1 mod_ssl/2.8.16 OpenSSL/0.9.7b

% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Curr. Dload Upload Total Current Left Speed 100 11651 100 11651 0 0 5675 0 0:00:02 0:00:02 0:00:00 23990
_______________________________
This shows success. Failure would be different in some way.



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