Job Discussion Forums

[nikon]

Hey collegues.

Sorry to bother you with technical problems not related to ESL.

I am at a large university in KSA, located on a hill overlooking the beautiful Arabian Gulf and for the last several months I have not been able to connect by FTP to make modifications to my own personal web site, that is hosted on servers outside of KSA which I assume are in N. America.
Apparently there are various proxy servers here that the campus uses, and by changing ports, firewalls, on/off, etc the problem remains. The slow speed adsl (sometimes as low as 21kbps) that we subscribe to here, may be part of the problem.

Several months have past and the technical support people have not been able to correct or advise me how to correct it. My host assures me that that all is working. I use dreamweaver MX, on this site, that has been online for more than 5 years.
If someone has some suggestions how and where, or who can help to remedy this problem, I would appreciate your help,

Thanks, (You can reply directly to me off this thread if you want).

[Turando]

Hi Nikon,

I had a problem when I first came to Saudi Arabia with accessing FTP. I was unable to do it directly using my website address. For e.g. hostname www.domain.com did not work. You had to put the IP address e.g. 64.2.31.1 to access it. You can get the IP from your host.

Lately though, the actual address works fine.

What kind of error are you getting? I manage a number of different websites and have no problem with FTP access.

Hope that helps.

[Stephen Jones]

the first thing to do is to check if the problem is with KFUPM or further upstream.

Connect with a dail-up connection and see if you can ftp using that.

If it doesn't work explain in more detail the exact error messages you are getting.

[nikon]

Thanks both of you for your suggestions;

I've tried with dial-up, the university LAN, wireless and the ADSL connection in my residence. All before and after 5pm when the ITC people say that FTP is allowed. I understand in my last conversation with the ADSL people here that there are no time restrictions on when FTP can be used at your residence. The error message given thru Dreamweaver "An FTP error occured- cannot make connection to the host".
I've asked my web host for help at least 3 times:
this is the way they tell me to do it:

To upload a webpage via Dreamweaver, follow these steps:
1) Open Dreamweaver
2) Sites --> Define Sites
3) Highlight your website name
4) Edit
5) Under the Local Info Tab: Name your website connection Local
Root Folder: this is the folder you have all your website files
in. Http Address: http://username.hypermart.net
6) Under the Web Server Info Tab: Server Access: FTP FTP Host:
ftp.hypermart.net
Login: username
Password: password
Click Save The host directory should be left blank as the
username will automatically point to the proper directory.
7) Click OK
8) Click Done
9) In the Site Window, use the drop down selector to select your
new site connection.
10) Click Connect selector to select your new site connection.
11) Click Connect

If you are attempting to upload files past a firewall via FTP,
you should make sure that your FTP program is set to a "passive"
transfer.

I've tried this and still doesn't connect.
Additionally downloaded a simple FTP program "coffee cup" and can't get that to connect.

Any other suggestions- I'll speak with the responsible technicians again.
It seems that the last time I was able to successfully log on with FTP and make changes was in late December- it is possible that I was using dialup-but not sure.
thanks