As I mentioned in my scheduled downtime post, I recently got a static IP address. In getting a static IP they assigned me an IP in a completely different range than I was in before with my dynamic IP that I used to have. Generally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but there are two big differences that I have found since getting this new IP address.

Previously, I was unable to send email from my server to anyone with a gmail email address. The message that I received from the gmail system eluded to it possibly being because my IP was determined to be in a range of dynamic IP addresses. There is no doubt in my mind that this is to help protect the users from spam and other unsolicited email. Since getting my new IP address, I can now send email to gmail addresses.

The other thing that I noticed was that although every other site that I have tried to access has worked, I have been unable to connect to Enkay’s site. Initially I thought that his site was down, but he assured me that it was not. When I tried accessing his site from elsewhere, it worked just fine. I determined that the problem must have been something with my connection because it worked from elsewhere, but was confused because everything else worked from home.

I contacted my ISP and was informed that my IP was part of a new range of IP addresses and that some sites have a sort of IP filtering in place to help protect against hackers and other malicious attempts. They said that they were going to send an email to Enkay’s hosting provider, and that they would have to add the range to their accepted IP addresses. That was a couple of days ago, but as of yet I still cannot access Enkay’s site from home.