Smoothwall blocking access to Arbor MIS

[tom_newton]

I would settle on one DNS provider for now, and see if that helps

[5nowman]

On 18/05/2026 at 15:44, tom_newton said:

@5nowman Smoothwall doesnt redirect to anything - it will use the DNS resolvers you tell it to use. 8.8.4.4 is the secondary to 8.8.8.8. You can also try quad9s (9.9.9.9) as an alternative, although that's a PDNS so will sometimes block stuff

 

Edit - if you have a ticket # I can ask one of our engineers to take a look at yours in the same way as Alan did for @toffee_paul

Hi..

 

going to try some of those dns a a physical entry on a workstation... this should in theory bypass the dns on smoothwall.

[5nowman]

On 18/05/2026 at 18:00, ConceroEdu_Matt said:

This isn't just for Arbor, we saw this last week with Instagram when unblocking, and changing DNS on the box resolved it for us as well. However, we changed it to 1.1.1.1 - from Googles, and then it worked. 

dns changed on workstation to bypass forwarding to router.
8.8.8.8 - fail - site slow
8.8.4.4 - fail - site slow
9.9.9.9 - fail - site slow
1.1.1.1 - fail - site slow.
refreshed cache after each dns change.
incognito window  - chrome. closed and opened after changing dns ip.

behaviourwatch https://eduspot.co.uk/behaviourwatch/

loads ok.. when you sign it, the page changes to the server

https://gb6.behaviourwatch.co.uk/ and it takes FOREVER to load... does time out or sometimes loads slow.

 

[ConceroEdu_Matt]

I may be wrong, but changing the DNS on the local device won't make any different, as the request will hit smoothwall and still use theirs.

 

I think this could be fixed by simply changing the external DNS that SW is using. Everything else you are suggesting isn't changing the bit that I and others have indicated has resolved the issue for us.

[toffee_paul]

Just to provide a final update for the original issue (inability to access our MIS), this was confirmed not to be a Smoothwall issue and was in fact a DNS issue.  Our ISP was failing to resolve the domain cdn.ravenjs.com that hosts JavaScript library necessary for Arbor to load.  After opening a ticket with our ISP about a week ago despite some initial to and fro with them, this is finally resolved and the domain now resolves correctly with their DNS forwarders.

[5nowman]

On 22/05/2026 at 10:50, toffee_paul said:

Just to provide a final update for the original issue (inability to access our MIS), this was confirmed not to be a Smoothwall issue and was in fact a DNS issue.  Our ISP was failing to resolve the domain cdn.ravenjs.com that hosts JavaScript library necessary for Arbor to load.  After opening a ticket with our ISP about a week ago despite some initial to and fro with them, this is finally resolved and the domain now resolves correctly with their DNS forwarders.

This is interesting. Glad you resolved it.

 

One of the things I did to t roubleshoot our issue was put a manual dns resolution on the smooothwall itself like a windows host file.

This is bad long term but good for troubleshooting.

 

in my case this didn't make a difference as our issue was something else

[tom_newton]

What was your issue in the end @5nowman?

[5nowman]

15 minutes ago, tom_newton said:

What was your issue in the end @5nowman?

Changes made their end on how the website handles multiple http requests/ object and it seems to have worked. Still being tested.

 

No timeouts now. Much much faster. It wasn't DNS lol 😆 

 

[5nowman]

I want to thank everyone for their help. 

 

Hope some of you are spending time to enjoy the sun. 

 

5nowman!

[tom_newton]

Nice to see we've gone 3 for 3 on "It wasn't the smoothwall"  that's a relief, but we are used to it - the filter is often a place people find stuff being blocked, so its natural to come there first (and it deffo sometimes IS us)