After you solve this one, you can try your hand at nailing gelatine to a
tree. If you are getting the disconnect after five seconds, the connection
is not timing out, it is being refused, perhaps actively refused (network
gurus, does that sound right?). That you can connect to other sites, and
that others can connect to your target, seems to indicate an interaction
between your two sites. That you get the same response from a Windows
desktop seems to confirm this.

You can look at performing various tests, such as turning on data and
command tracing, although only command tracing should show anything, and
multiplying environments and subnets from which you attempt to connect. If
you can find an exception, that rules out your ISP. But if you can get your
respective ISPs to work together to try to resolve this, that is likely your
best way to go. These are never fun problems to solve.

I had a network team tell me for three years that "nothing changed" in an
enormous environment, everytime we reported a problem. And some of these
problems mysteriously went away and stayed away as suddenly as they
appeared. I finally concluded that this network team's sole responsibility
was to monitor the network, since they never changed it.

Greg Stigers, MCSA
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