I can confidently say this issue has been resolved with the equipment replacement

Dodgy modem?

It appears that way. TPG did deny it but replacing it did make a big difference. To be honest I'd rather choose my own model anyway. Most of the DSL modems out there are just garbage, including some that were once regarded as the leading brands.

The remote monitoring link for the CCTV system where my workshop is located is via TPG and we have had a number of issues with the modems they supplied. I think we are now on modem number 3.

Symptom was a random loss of sync, and TPG wanted to shift the blame to Telstra, but a check by them of the line gave it the thumbs up.

I ended up shifting back to Netgear. I've always found their modems to be the most stable though the last one I purchased would not allow FTP to work from a client installed on a Windows 10 computer. It was a bizarre issue that no-one knew the answer to. Microsoft, Netgear and the FTP client vendor all blamed each other, me or my ISP, depending on what I told them at the time without any testing being done and without anyone doing any thinking. For a time, I ran two laptops - the new Windows 10 one, which I am still using, for everything but uploading to the web server and the old Windows 7 laptop for FTP. The trouble was, every time a member wanted photos published, the old laptop would have to come out. After eight years of uninterrupted service including no reload of Windows in that time, I think that machine had earned a rest. After trying two modems in place of the last Netgear I ended up replacing them with TPG's standard model. It was good for about six months and then the dropouts occurred. It is now on the tip where it belongs.

The best modems I ever had were a pair of quite expensive Cisco small business modems. Absolutely bulletproof and I got a good five years out of them. Back then I ran two separate connections as that is the best way to host a website, especially if other services are also being hosted. The operation runs only one connection at this time, as I worked out a way of cheating the system to accept only one name server, though this is now handled externally so only one connection is required in any case.

I have been using a Belkin modem on ASDL for more than 10 years. It's on 24x7, and -- touch wood -- it will stay on until I get cut over to the NBN.

A quick question: After doing a few tweaks to the site over the last week or so I have not been confronted with any 500 Errors. Has anyone else had any difficulties accessing the site in the last ten days or so?

I have had two 500 issues: But there seems to be stability issues with Firefox and I have had several issues with it hanging, to the point I have removed it from the Laptop & if it keeps doing it on this one, it will get the same treatment. They are set up, as far as I am concerned, not to listen as finding a way of contacting them is almost invisible. Therefore if I have problems with it & I can get no support, I erase it.

Yes, sorry to say, I've had 500 errors today and this afternoon the site was unreachable for a period, as confirmed by websitedown.info.

No worries. I will keep at it.

I got a 500 error about half an hour ago.

I had a few 500 errors earlier tonight. All good now.
Browser is Pale Moon.

Still no closer to solving the 500-Error, a few of which have occurred today, including for me. I did a server restart at about 18:30 to apply some MS updates and whilst MS updates won't fix the issue the restart itself will stabilise things a little. Rest assured that I am still looking for the glitch.

For the record, I got a '503 service unavailable' error message a few minutes ago, if that's any assistance in diagnosing this problem.

I just rebooted the server so this may have caused that error.

I do like to give a warning before applying Windows updates that require a reboot though for safety's sake it has become necessary to apply updates as they arrive due to the malware attacks that we've all become aware of recently. Most of these attacks don't work unless a phishing e-mail is responded to though a few will work off the bat so it is unfortunately important to stay ahead of the field.

I have some time to spare on Sunday so if all goes well I am going to do some more work on the new web server. I won't promise a go-live date because something usually manages to stuff that up but.... It is coming soon.

I may need to reboot the server again in the next couple of hours.

I apologise to all members for today's outage. A so-called technical issue with the ISP has had the site off for most of today. It should all be sorted now.