I'm getting a 403 error when trying to view a website I recently set up, but only when I try to access it from a particular office.

Features of the problem:

* The the website seems accessible from everywhere else but this one office.
* There is definately communciation with the web server because its logs show the 403 error.
* I can access numerous other virtual hosts hosted by the same web server on the same IP without any problems.
* Can't find my office's IP address anywhere in any of the config files on the web server, which suggests to me the web server is not choosing to discriminate on this basis (must admit my limited understanding/knowledge of Apache at this stage...)
* The website worked for a bit then stopped [apparently] spontaneously working for one office!

The problem definitely concerns my office as a whole. The problem is consitently exhibited by machines of different platforms and with different browsers. This includes laptops that have not problems when accessing the website outside the office.

I've tried pointing a completely different domain at the web server's IP and creating a new and separate vhosts entry to point to the files on the web server but this results in the same problem.

My web server is using CentOS 3.7 and Apache 2.0.46

I'm wondering if this problem is even to do with the web server at all but I'm tearing my hair out and am completely out of ideas! I've checked my office's firewall settings and can see nothing that would cause this.

Any ideas?

Are there 403 errors in your logs that you can relate to the problem systems? Have you tried clearing browser cache?

Examples of the errors in the log:

80.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [15/May/2006:09:12:20 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
80.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [15/May/2006:13:43:22 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Firefox/1.5.0.3"

The problem is nothing to do with browser caches. This problem relates to a whole physical site (office) not a single machine and is demonstrated on machines even on their first attempt to visit the site.

Those look like access_log entries, anything from error_log?

Um. At this stage I have to reveal my idiocy and admit that the problem is nothing to do with Apache at all...

It turns out that the CMS I'm using for the website in question banned my office's IP because it originated 10 failed login attempts! Have now turned this setting off and removed the IP from the ban list!

Thanks for taking an interest and sorry for having to put up with my newbieness!

The CMS is e107 by the way (e107 dot org) and it's fantastic! It's open source and uses PHP and MySQL - I'm using it for my organisation's intranet and it's proving a near perfect solution for our needs. I obviously still need to get to know it a bit better though!