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AW disconnected from the world...
  Finally it has been proven, you can actually be denied entry to AW, because of another user. Really, I didn't believe it but it happened to me during last week. 
First the facts : wednesday, somewhere around 23:00 VRT, I wanted to verify some - what I thought at the time exagerated - claims by one of the citizens that were banned from AW. The claim was that he  was banned from AW (that is : his account isn't accessible to him anymore and coming in under his citname as tourist, got him ejected). Whatever : he may have forgotten his password and the e-mail addy in the login menu may have expired, I was going to dive into it to see what happened. 
I took my good old camera, dusted it, ironed my tourist outfit and teleported to AW GZ as tourist and named myself like that banned citizen. I talked a bit, even told a new citizen that the "rights" he just bought can be terminated in a snap and I left. My tourist outfit doesn't really fit me anymore, lol. 
I was not ejected, there was no warning or any sign of hosility. There is a witness who knows that it was me, before I spoke. For privacy reasons I won't tell the name of that citizen. 
Yes, i did this whole thing on purpose to see what would happen. I was dissapointed at the time, because nothing seemed to have happened and I began to wonder what must have been the cause of the ejection and banning. 

Next day I tried to get back in : "AW appears to be closed at this time. Please,try again later". (actually I have the dutch message set, but this translation is very close to the english message). At first I thought that AW just had crashed again, but my icq-contacts told me it hadn't. Since i got more than one ISP I dialed in via the other one. Guess what : I was welcomed by the ever correct and friendly Immigration officer. 
The next day I took some more time to see what was going on..... Again I couldn't get back in. I wondered if it had something to do with the ISP.  So i went back to the first ISP and dialed in via a number in a Telephone zone  next to mine. I got in without a problem. 

I hear this is happening to more and more people. Also americans. 
As I see it two possible causes :  

- technical malfunctions of some kind that prevents people from logging in to AW with some ISP's in some (sometimes very specific) areas 
- or some deliberate action of somebody to block out users. Compare it to the events that have happened when some credit card fraude was discovered and calls from Russia were apparently disabled. 
If the causes are technical, they should be resolved soon. Activeworlds.com wants as much users as possible, to be able to sell space on their universe server. There are commercial interests at stake. 
If ISP's (or specific areas served by that ISP) are blocked deliberately because of problems with one user, this can affect others who don't have nothing to do with it, when this user is using a variable IP-address (read as : dial-up connection). 

Anyway, in both cases, if I were an investor in a virtual shop or business in AW, I'd like to know which areas and ISP's were having trouble with accessing AW... It could be my target audience. But then again, I'm not a shop owner in AW. What do I care? 

Oh, yes, I contacted support@activeworlds.com. Story to be continued, I'm sure..... 

I'll leave you to your own conclusions. I'll just keep a few different ISP's and a dial-up possibility too, at all times. 

Anyway, enjoy reading AWWoS, it would very much surprise me if your ISP was blocked here....
 

Simon Says 
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