Server IP Blocked

WordPress doesn’t block IPs (with very few exceptions). What errors do you get?

An unexpected error occurred. Something may be wrong with www.ads-software.com or this server’s configuration. If you continue to have problems, please try the support forums.

IP is 69.16.221.200

Liquidweb seems to think it is. Can’t update WordPress or any plugins etc

Thanks for responding.

WordPress could not establish a secure connection to www.ads-software.com. Please contact your server administrator.) in …/public_html/wp-includes/update.php on line 388

Check to make sure you have the latest version of OpenSSL installed along with the latest certificates.

Liquidweb says all that SSL stuff is perfectly fine. I literally can’t upgrade or download any plugins on all the sites on my server. Is there anyone who I can talk to or communicate with – we have a couple hundred sites on this server and I can’t see any reason why this has happened, we have been going along for 15 years here without issues. We are talking about plumbers and dentist sites on here, we are not marketers or spammers.

From a command line (via SSH), what do you get for

curl -i -v https://api.www.ads-software.com

Any errors?

I’ve looked at the IP address and gotten a list of virtual hosts on that (I have a DNS tool). There are a lot of servers on that IP by DNS name.

The first one I looked at is running WordPress 5.4.2. Are you having trouble upgrading core WordPress or a plugin or theme?

Apologies if you answered that already and I missed it.

My server has 4 IP address, but most sites are using the 69.16.221.200, the others can ping www.ads-software.com without issue. This is the only one, but nearly all sites are on this IP. All those sites cannot access the WordPress repository or rss feeds or anything, cant update, cant download etc.

Again, please try the curl command.

There is probably a few hundred sites on this IP on this server – you are right that some are on an older version of WordPress, but most are updated. But why would one IP be able to ping and the other one not go thru.

When we tried to run the SSH command line – it ran with no response

Finally said failed to connect 443 timed out etc

connection timed out, failed to connect

What can I do here guys? This comes from my host, where I have been for 10 years without issue:

Okay, I checked routes to the api.www.ads-software.com website from your server, and several other locations, and it looks like WordPress is flat out blocking your server for no good reason that I can find. So the only way you’re going to get this resolved is to talk with WordPress and find out from them why your server is blocked in their firewall. Beyond that, there’s not a lot we can do.

There has to be someone that can tell me why my IP address is blocked, this is hundreds of sites that cant upgrade right now? Why is this happening?

First, understand that we in the forums do not have access to information like that. I’ll ask someone from the systems team to take a look.

So the only way you’re going to get this resolved is to talk with WordPress and find out from them why your server is blocked in their firewall. Beyond that, there’s not a lot we can do.

There literally is no one to talk to at “WordPress”. This isn’t a company or anything like that. I’m pretty sure you’ve a network issue though on your host side.

Let’s try some CLI commands via ssh to get some info. First one is this to confirm what the Internet sees your requests as. This may seem redundant but give these a try to gather info.

Step 1

curl https://ifconfig.io/

Ideally that command will return one line, your external IP address of 69.16.221.200.

Next up, let’s rule out any DNS issues.

Step 2

dig api.www.ads-software.com

On my Linux box the IP address for api.www.ads-software.com I get is 198.143.164.251. I then use this openssl command to check that I can see the TLS certs from that server for api.www.ads-software.com.

Step 3

openssl s_client -connect 198.143.164.251:443 -servername api.www.ads-software.com </dev/null

Which should produce some output. On my server I see this at the top.

$ openssl s_client -connect 198.143.164.251:443 -servername api.www.ads-software.com </dev/null
CONNECTED(00000003)
depth=2 C = US, ST = Arizona, L = Scottsdale, O = "GoDaddy.com, Inc.", CN = Go Daddy Root Certificate Authority - G2
verify return:1
depth=1 C = US, ST = Arizona, L = Scottsdale, O = "GoDaddy.com, Inc.", OU = https://certs.godaddy.com/repository/, CN = Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2
verify return:1
depth=0 OU = Domain Control Validated, CN = *.www.ads-software.com
verify return:1
---
Certificate chain
 0 s:OU = Domain Control Validated, CN = *.www.ads-software.com
   i:C = US, ST = Arizona, L = Scottsdale, O = "GoDaddy.com, Inc.", OU = https://certs.godaddy.com/repository/, CN = Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2
 1 s:C = US, ST = Arizona, L = Scottsdale, O = "GoDaddy.com, Inc.", OU = https://certs.godaddy.com/repository/, CN = Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2
   i:C = US, ST = Arizona, L = Scottsdale, O = "GoDaddy.com, Inc.", CN = Go Daddy Root Certificate Authority - G2
 2 s:C = US, ST = Arizona, L = Scottsdale, O = "GoDaddy.com, Inc.", CN = Go Daddy Root Certificate Authority - G2
   i:C = US, O = "The Go Daddy Group, Inc.", OU = Go Daddy Class 2 Certification Authority
---
Server certificate
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
[ SNIP! ]

All that does is show me that my TLS handshake is working with that IP and servername.

When you do that, what do you get for steps 1, 2 and 3? What is your external IP and what do you resolve api.www.ads-software.com to? And do you see the TLS server for the api.www.ads-software.com server?