During the last few days we experienced an interesting issue. Twice we could not access our website and got the message and you might have had experienced the same:

Wondering what happened we checked the internet connection, which was fine, maybe a little bit slow, but working, because at least Baidu could be opened. So next trial, can we open Google, yes it works.

Mmmmh Internet connection okay!

Then suddenly we get a new message from our computer, this time from our email program, telling us it also cannot find the server. Okay, now check if we have a open bill for the host. No the host is paid and the at least for the next month, until we have to pay again, it should be fine.

Okay, let’s contact our host and ask, what’s wrong. Luckily the service of our host is quick and usually good.  So let’s send the ticket with the message, we cannot open our webpage and we also don’t receive or send anymore emails. Please check what is wrong.

One hour later the answer is coming. Telling us, we are sorry, we cannot detect any problem, the page is loading. Please check again on your side.

We check again: “Server not found”.

Now we start to wonder, what is that? Suddenly we remember, man, last week there was a hype about hacking and that US is blaming China to have a hacker unit in Shanghai. Could that be the reason?

So send the host the information, that we try to reach the page from China and what do you think was the answer?

Yeah, all IP coming in from China are blocked from the Firewall of the host. Great! Now they are secure.

After giving the provider this feedback they remove the entry in their firewall and it works again.

It seems China is doing its best to kill the internet. First we cannot access pages like facebook and youtube, because the “Great Wall” is blocking them and now the foreign host block IPs from China.

If that continues, we might only be able to access the local internet and then it is not anymore www (world wide web) and it becomes truly a INTRAnet.

What else to say? I personal think it is not reasonable to block all IPs from China, even if there is a risk, because the Chinese People I know, don’t seem to be hacker and I doubt the majority is. Also I am pretty sure there are hackers everywhere, so in future everybody will block everybody? That sounds to me worst the cold war.

Finally, if you experience the same problem with your webpage or email account you should consider either contacting your provider, move your page and emailing account to China or just accepting that you might miss an important information or email. You also could try VPN, but as we all know, they get blocked too, sooner or later.

We from our side will do everything we can to keep our page up and accessible from everywhere and for everybody.