After many hours on the phone with various people (technical & help desk) at TPG, and much checking/testing by TPG, I am assured that it is NOT a problem at TPG's end, and they are NOT blocking those sites.

Paul

Hi - for those people who have problems accessing some OPC sites (like myself), this may help.

My ISP is Plusnet (now part of BT) and I contacted them about this problem.

It turns out that the default Plusnet DNS server (the server that resolves website addresses and allows you to connect to the website) didn't recognise the website I was trying to contact i.e. www.opcdorset.com (and the Somerset OPC for that matter).

The techie at Plusnet suggested configuring alternative DNS server addresses for my TCP/IP installation on my PC and now I can access all the sites!!

I'm a techie, so doing this was no problem, but the bottom line is:

The problem lies with your ISP and they should be able to fix it for you.

Hope this helps. If anyone needs more info. please ask.

Good news.
Clearly had to be a problem with ISPs at the requesting end because as I said there is absolutely no connection or commonality between the various OPC sites.

Jon

Yes - I agree Jon.

My only concern is that I could access the Dorset OPC website a few weeks ago with my original (default) DNS server configuration! Strange.

Anyway, back in business - thanks for the update.

I stand well and truly corrected and thank you very much for your assistance to everyone. I have just changed my DNS Servers (primary and secondary) and I was able to contact the OPC sites for Dorset and Sussex which I haven't been able to do for months!

I will now contact my ISP and let them know that they need to fix up their DNS Servers.

Thank you all once again.... Paul

Hi Paul,
My wife Lynne and I have been extremely interested in this thread as we have had the same problems as you have had with contacting the Dorset OPC site for something like 12 months or more. We are also TPG customers and I have contacted TPG support staff in the past and they have suggested various things like checking security settings, clearing cache etc but to no avail. I'm not a techie but can go into tools, options etc, and change varios settings, could you contact us offlist at our e-mail address of keilyn03@tpg.com.au and give us some pointers on how to change these DNS settings that have been spoken about, we are running windows XP home edition with the various upgrades.

Many Thanks.

Reply sent off list. Paul