CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

So I've been having a few problems with connecting to CAA from my school's wireless in the computer lab. I go to http://www.christiananime.net and, after loading for about 10 minutes (no lie), a message tells me that "the server has reset". I wouldn't be as concerned with this if I hadn't learned just the other day that another CAAer (Fish and Chips) has been having the same problem with his school's wireless. Almost all other sites load except for CAA. Is CAA not allowing school wireless signals to connect, or is this a problem on the school's part? Any answers or explanations of this problem are greatly appreciated. XD

Nope! My school's wireless is doing well with CAA.

Peanut is apparently having the same problem at his school. I don't think he's been able to get on CAA at all in the last week.

meboeck wrote:Peanut is apparently having the same problem at his school. I don't think he's been able to get on CAA at all in the last week.

That's when I started noticing the problem, too. It makes me wonder how many other CAAers have been completely unable to log on at CAA in the past week. Pretty strange, if you ask me. O_o

I suspect that CAA was added to a list of servers that are "entertainment" in nature. As such, many schools/libraries have banned access to the system. I know that I am able to access the site with no trouble from many different areas, using many different wi-fi devices. I'll keep looking around, though, and see if I can see any evidence that we're blocked.

Mithrandir wrote:I suspect that CAA was added to a list of servers that are "entertainment" in nature. As such, many schools/libraries have banned access to the system. I know that I am able to access the site with no trouble from many different areas, using many different wi-fi devices. I'll keep looking around, though, and see if I can see any evidence that we're blocked.

The only thing that's strange about that is that the message for CAA is not the same as the message for blocked sites. When trying to reach CAA from my school, I always see a "the server has been reset" message after something like 7-10 minutes of waiting on a blank screen; when trying to reach a blocked site, as noted by Fish, a different message comes up entirely. I don't know what that might or might not mean, but I figure it was worth a mention. XD

And you never get that error visiting any other sites over the wireless? Hmm... That is MOST bizarre.

"I must needs think more on this, methinks."

I'll confirm that Peanut hasn't been able to get on as of late (I think he can only access the web via a school network) and I'll also note that I too haven't been able to access CAA from school for the same reason. (Although I'm at home mostly so that isn't a problem) I think they were saying they they've banned anything like Myspace or whatnot due to bandwidth usage... With all the money kids pay to go to school these days, I wouldn't think that bandwidth would be such a big problem, but apparently they're limiting where we can go now (Little Fascists aren't they?). Overall though, I have to comment that the new design is really nice (although I can't edit posts that aren't really really recent that I added anymore) and I would like to see Peanut online more, 'cause his character is slowly fading away in the RP he was a major part of . Ah, I'll try to keep his character alive until he can return, or the schools finally give in , or something else happens .

-Pascal

Pascal wrote:[color="Black"]I'll confirm that Peanut hasn't been able to get on as of late (I think he can only access the web via a school network) and I'll also note that I too haven't been able to access CAA from school for the same reason. (Although I'm at home mostly so that isn't a problem) I think they were saying they they've banned anything like Myspace or whatnot due to bandwidth usage...[/color]

That's interesting. I did a little test today regarding that and went to MySpace just to see if it loaded, and it actually loaded just fine. Thing is, CAA doesn't seem to be blocked; it just refuses to load. When you try to reach a site that's blocked, an entirely different message comes up instead. The one that I and a few others have gotten simply says, "The server has been reset". Additionally, I tried going to a few other forums today, and they all loaded fine, as well. It just seems odd that CAA is the only site (unblocked) that just doesn't seem to load. Makes no sense. O_o

For troubleshooting purposes, you might try going to:

http://www.flactem.com/

and see if THAT works. I suspect it will not, but it might help narrow down what's going on with the system.

I've seen a few other reports start to trickle in regarding other sites with similar issues, but I'll need to catch someone on AIM while they're on the wifi network in question to really be able to track this down more effectively.

From what I understand, users are able to sort of "Connect" to CAA, evident that users like Peanut and Fish and Chips appear under the "Currently Active Users" tab. On their end, they get the "Waiting for CAA" message. Perhaps CAA's data is being received by them, but aren't sending it to them?

Edit: August 25th, 2007 seems to be the date for the last post of both Peanut and Fish and Chips (Minus the one marked today, that was me on his username with his permission). Radical Dreamer also mentioned that on a Friday (The 24th) was the last day that CAA worked for her at school. Up till then, everyone's computers on school networks were seemingly able to log into CAA. Any idea if something happened on the 25th of August?

What about talking to the officials at the schools? Maybe they can figure something out?

Oops, I posted as my brother up there XD; I hate sharing my laptop...

Well, if one of the technical support people at the school can help troubleshoot it, that would be awesome!

Mithrandir wrote:Well, if one of the technical support people at the school can help troubleshoot it, that would be awesome!

I'm curious as to how they would troubleshoot it, though.

According to Sir Fish, his school tech support was unable to help him except for saying that "It's a server issue on [Mith's] end."

I'm not sure if that's much help. D:

OK. Here's what we know:

1. Some (but not all) people on some (but not all) wifi connections have trouble.
2. Some users have reported issues with plugged in lines.
3. The WiFi installations that have trouble are all designed to handle large volumes of traffic (school, library, etc).

Hmm...

Do all affected users have a filter of some kind? It's possible that's keeping data from going through. Even if it gives a different error when it blocks stuff, it can still create problems if it's not coded correctly.

Ok...I have some good news for you guys. I have returned to school and have managed to get onto CAA via a proxy.

Peanut

Peanut wrote:Ok...I have some good news for you guys. I have returned to school and have managed to get onto CAA via a proxy.

Peanut

Which proxy are you using, out of curiosity? I'd like to let Fish know, so he can start using CAA again, not to mention myself, if it works at my school. XD

This is what I use:http://proxy.org/cgi_proxies.shtml. You just need to enter the URL in the appropriate spot and it randomly picks a proxy for you to use.

Seems that proxies are block for the Fishinator.

Most are, at least. More importantly, the site that provides proxies at random is blocked, so unless certain sites from that site will work, no luck. XD

EDIT

Well, after linking Fish to a good number of proxy sites, the one that seemed to work the best was "stopthatblock.com". Unfortunately, it only allows him to view the site, and not actually log in or post anything. Here's the message he got when he tried to log in:

"In order to accept POST request originating from this domain, the admin must add this domain to the whitelist."

Any thoughts?

Radical Dreamer wrote:Any thoughts?

With love.
With anger.
Thoroughly.
Thor-ough-ly.

Stop That Block's solid gold till it inevitably gets added to the proxy list. Chat's moot, though.

Fish and Chips wrote:With love.
With anger.
Thoroughly.
Thor-ough-ly.

Stop That Block's solid gold till it inevitably gets added to the proxy list. Chat's moot, though.

Thoughts on this post:

Hmm. Editing doesn't seem to work with the proxy. Well, that or it just goes really, really slowly.

ANYWAYS. Update. My school also has the main proxy site blocked, however, stopthatblock.com seems to be working. Unfortunately, it won't work in the chat for me, either, so I guess that's just due to the limitations of the proxy. And for some reason, I was able to log in the second time, after getting that "In order to accept POST request originating from this domain, the admin must add this domain to the whitelist" message. So I dunno, weird.

Campus network makes quick work. Not even 24 hours, and stoptheblock is denied. Using Unblockpod right now, mostly just to say that any proxy used will likely have the lifespan of one day tops before being removed.

School policy doesn't prohibit use of CAA in any way, right? In the given situation, I think it might be appropriate to talk to the school's IT people and give them the new information. They may have a proxy they can trust that they could whitelist for you.

Otherwise, you'll just have to get in a lot of CAA each day it's available.

uc pseudonym wrote:School policy doesn't prohibit use of CAA in any way, right? In the given situation, I think it might be appropriate to talk to the school's IT people and give them the new information. They may have a proxy they can trust that they could whitelist for you.

"Appealing notion, but improbable."

Actually, that sounds like a plan. I'll mention that, thanks.

I wonder why we got blocked. That's pretty weird.

If anyone has any information about where we're blocked (the name of the software package that lists us as blocked), please let me know. I'll contact the administrators of the software package and see if I can figure out what's going on.

Mithrandir wrote:I wonder why we got blocked. That's pretty weird.

If anyone has any information about where we're blocked (the name of the software package that lists us as blocked), please let me know. I'll contact the administrators of the software package and see if I can figure out what's going on.

I actually have no idea, as CAA never redirects. Blocked sites redirect to websense, but CAA never does.