Tech Forum

The stake tech specialist (after working with me for hours) contacted the GSC and authorized them to contact me to work the issues on the New Family Search blocking. After working several hours over two days with 4 different technicians, the last tech determined with the aid of his supervisors that New Family Search was indeed being blocked that his end for some unknown reason. We were on the Meetinghouse only script and he remotely switched us to the FHC and Meetinghouse script for the Cisco box we have. That worked beautifully for about two weeks and then this last Sunday it started all over again. The system seems to go into a cascade failure and after a while starts blocking all sites. I sent an email to the last tech who helped. So far not a peep of a response from the GSC. It has been one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had. The firewall makes our system virtually useless for our Family History classes. And don't get me started about the sites that are blocked, like Open Office. One of the blocked sites is our county records site that we use for membership research. And there seems to be no way to get a site unblocked. Since the ward is paying for the Internet service, I would say we are losing badly needed funds due to this system. Frustrating...

I suggest you get your Stake President's permission and then switch to "General Access". It's much more open for general family history work and is the same filtering level that's used in the official FH centers.

nicklewis wrote:The system seems to go into a cascade failure and after a while starts blocking all sites.

Is the Church provided firewall receiving electrical power through a surge suppressor or an uninterruptible power supply? The firewalls have a failure mode in which the internet will be blocked. This can be caused by brief interruptions in the power supply or surges in the power supply. This partial failure can be cleared by power cycling the firewall to reset it to full and normal operations. If you find you are power cycling the firewall on a regular basis and the firewall is not protected by a proper surger protector or uninterruptible power supply then there is a power grid or power supply problem that needs to be rectified. As a minimum a good quality surge protector should be used. If there are any interruptions in the power supply then an uninterruptible power supply should be used (it also has surge protection).