Activation IP Blocked

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  • #6093
    Paul D.
    Participant

    Greetings!

    I filed a ticket to our webhost (Hostnine) asking them to unblock BPS Pro Activation IP address for some of our websites and they asked us this question :

    How does it try to communicate with 173.201.92.1? Is it trying to communicate over a MySQL port perhaps?

    What should I tell them ?

    Thanks,
    Paul

    #6099
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    The communication is done with the standard WordPress wp_remote_post() function.  And no this does not have to do with MySQL.  This is HTTP based and NOT DB based.

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_API/wp_remote_post

    And also the standard WordPress wp_remote_get() function.

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_API/wp_remote_get

    #6101
    Paul D.
    Participant

    Thanks !

    This is a bit too technical. I gather referencing this thread should point the webhost tech support in the right direction for them to solve the BPS Pro IP unblocking ?
    Paul

    #6103
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    Yes, this is the basic standard communication API method for WordPress that plugins like Akismet use to communicate from site to site.

    #6105
    Paul D.
    Participant

    Thanks.

    I will inform hostnine tech support of this thread and hopefully they could unblock BPS Pro activation  IP address with the information provided on this discussion thread.

    One more thing, can we request an activation key even if we do have a “special” activation key provided  for us.. meaning can we (or BPS Pro) override the special activation key for us to use/request an original activation key instead of using the “special key”.. for upgrade purposes.

    Thanks,
    Paul

    #6106
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    They do not need to understand anything.  They just need to either unblock the literal IP address or just allow basic communication.  If they are specifically blocking standard WordPress functions then yes they will know they are blocking standard basic WordPress communication functions and probably should not be doing that.

    If your site cannot communicate with the AITpro API Server then there is only 1 special key for this problem.  You cannot request an Activation Key if you cannot communicate with the API Server.  Encrypted Activation Keys are generated automatically by the API Server.  This cannot be done manually because it would not make any difference if your website cannot communicate with the API Server.

    Bottom line if your Host is blocking communication with the AITpro API Server there is only 1 solution – use the 1 special Key.  There are no other options.

    #6109
    Paul D.
    Participant

    Hi!

    What I meant was IF we managed to have the webhost unblock the BPS Pro activation IP address and we already used the special activation key provided to us.. Can we request another activation key (not using the special key this time.. since webhost unblocked BPS Pro activation IP address)

    Thanks,

    Paul

    #6114
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    Yes, if your site is no longer blocking communication with the AITpro API Server then you will then need to request an Activation Key for that site as you would normally do for sites that are not blocking the AITpro API Server.

    #6119
    Paul D.
    Participant

    Thanks !

    #6120
    Paul D.
    Participant

    Update :

    I was informed by hostnine tech support about this :

    HTTP outgoing is open on our servers. Here I can telnet into 80 on one of Google’s servers:

    root@uswest15 [~]# telnet google.com 80
    Trying 173.194.33.38…
    Connected to google.com (173.194.33.38).
    Escape character is ‘^]’.
    ^]
    telnet>

    Here you can see that our firewall has no rules about the IP that you’re trying to connect to:

    root@uswest15 [~]# iptables -L -n | grep 173.201.92.1
    root@uswest15 [~]# route -n | grep 173.201.92.1
    root@uswest15 [~]#

    However, I cannot seem to connect to 173.201.92.1 from the server on port 80. Thus, the port is open and we’re not blocking connections, which leads me to believe that perhaps they are blocking our IP? Can you see if they’re blocking connections from 67.228.207.197 on their end?

     

    Thanks,

    Paul

    #6121
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    The AITpro API Server does allow for a general Ping test, but will Forbid any other type of connection attempts for obvious reasons.

    Use the BPS Pro Ping Ping website Tool from this website and you should see this.  If your Server is doing something that changes the way your website communicates with other sites than whatever that is is going to be the problem and not a literal IP address block.

    api.ait-pro.com is reachable using fsockopen Port 80. Response Time: 2 milliseconds

    Using fsockopen to test port 80 on the api.ait-pro.com should be used, but since they found that port 80 is open using telnet then the issue is something else.  We are not blocking that IP address so I am not sure what the issue is.

    #6124
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    When I try to Ping 67.228.207.197 from 173.201.92.1 I get this.

    67.228.207.197 is NOT reachable using fsockopen Port 80.
    Either this website domain does not exist, the website domain is down or your website/Server IP Address: 173.201.92.1 is being blocked by this website domain/Web Host.

    #6125
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    When I try and ping any other websites on this Server they are all returning the same thing.  This Server is blocking communication with the AITpro API Server.

    #6126
    Paul D.
    Participant

    What do you suggest ?

    #6127
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    There is nothing I can do.  This is on your end.  This also impacts 100’s of other BPS Pro customers that have SoftLayer Servers.  I just looked through the Server log files and 100’s of other websites are now not able to communicate with the AITpro API Server so these folks will not get BPS Pro upgrade notifications anymore either.  Since we have no control over what other Hosts/Servers do that are not our own Servers then there is nothing we can do about this.

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