[Wylug-discuss] Virgin internet (lack of) connection

[Roger Beaumont]

<beware rant>
Hi, Does anyone here know anything about Virgin? ('Cos they know nothing 
about Linux.)

On Friday night my Virgin internet connection went down again and since it 
came back up the connection from outside is dead.

I have a network of 5 or 6 machines connected to the cable modem via a LEAF 
bering firewall box and for I can't remember how many years (back in the 
Yorkshire Cable days) I've run Apache to serve websites for originally The 
Priestley theatre, then the local Lib Dems, then a poet friend...

Since the connection came back up, despite altering the DNS at 123-reg, 
none of the sites is accessible.  I can still SSH out to a friend's 
machine, but can't then SSH back.  Pinging the new IP number (or any of the 
named domains, such as beaunet.homelinux.net) from there also gets no response.

The IP no. changed from 82.38.52.76 to 77.97.171.44, if that's relevant at all.

Help from the Website was nil - like suggesting I might be running the 
wrong version of Windows...

Probably needless to say, ringing Virgin's 'technical' support was a 
pointless exercise.  Once he'd established that I could browse the Web, 
then he said his job was complete - the connection was working!  I pointed 
out that that wasn't what I'd rung for, but to ask about service changes.
Him: "There aren't any."
Me: "Yes there are. I can't SSH in from outside any more or even get a ping 
response."
Him: "What's that?  Can you see web pages?"

Clearly he wasn't who I needed to talk to - which I know isn't his fault - 
so I asked for a number I could ring to talk to someone who could answer my 
question.  "0906 991 0001" - which tells me there is no such number...
</rant>

Like I said, does anyone here know anything that might cast light on the 
situation, or even help?

Roger