Question
Store Manager does not come up for me, is it down?
Answer
Store Manager was not down. The problem turned out to be with the Internet Service Provider - Comcast. The client spoke with someone at Comcast, who said that we had a feature called "Smartpack" installed and activated. He disabled this feature and Store Manager has been able to connect without a problem every since.
Date Created: 03/04/09
Question
I'm having trouble connecting to Store Manager and E-Mail. What's up are you guys down?
Answer
Modern Retail services were not down and this problem turned out to be an issue with their Internet Service Provider, Comcast. Comcast had a feature called "Smartpack" enabled in their firewall. As soon as this feature was disabled all issues went away immediately.
Date Created: 03/17/09
Question
I can't access email from either the web site or in Outlook. I'm also have problems accessing Store Manager occasionally.
Answer
This turned out to be another problems with Comcast's "Smartpack". We actually talked with a technician at Comcast who said they've been having similar issues with other clients. Apparently, Smartpack is a setting in the Firewall and as soon as they turned it off everything worked immediately.
Date Created: 03/21/09
Question
Store Manager is throwing a lot of errors lately. What's up?
Answer
It looks like you are using Comcast. Could you please call Comcast and ask them to turn off "Smartpack" in your firewall.
Date Created: 05/04/09
Question
It's starting to happen again. I'm trying to click "save" in the product edit page and get an error page. I tried to go from the "recent arrivals" department to the "bridal" department and again, I got another error message. I've put in several support requests regarding this over the last few months and it keeps happening, though sporadically. It usually starts happening in the afternoons. Please look into this.
Answer
I did a reverse lookup on your IP address and it does look like you are using Comcast as your ISP. Could you please call Comcast and ask them to disable "Smartpack" in your firewall.
Date Created: 05/21/09
Question
Our email is not working through mail.modernretail.com or through Outlook today. Please advise as soon as possible.
Answer
I looked up your IP Address and it looks like you're using Comcast as your ISP. Could you please call Comcast tomorrow and ask them to turn off SMARTPACK in your router/firewall. Turning off SmartPack immediately fixed her email problems.
Date Created: 06/17/09
Question
We can't get access our email through Outlook or the web interface.
Answer
It looks like you are having the Comcast SmartPack problem. This is a nasty problem and we have no idea why Comcast is blocking traffic to your email server. I really have no explanation as to why Comcast is blocking your email traffic and the recommendation we have for you is to call Comcast and ask them to DISABLE THE SMARTPACK.
Client spoke with Comcast who removed the Smartpack service by "bridging the modem" and now they are up and running.
Date Created: 09/24/09
Question
Every time I type in https://manager.modernretail.com it will not go to the log in page. It says there is an error connecting bt I can get to any other websites so it is not our internet. Can you please help!
Answer
It looks like you have the dreaded Comcast Smart Problem. Link to this page provided.
Date Created: 11/19/09
Question
We are unable to access our website or Store Manager from our office network. I can access everything from other locations. Any chance you are blocking traffic from our IP for some reason?
It's worth noting that our ability or reach the email server is unaffected.
Answer
We definitely have not blocked your IP address and instead believe you are having a problem with your Comcast connection. While it has been a few years, this Comcast Smartpack Problem really caused us a bunch of aggravation. Could you please call Comcast to verify this feature is disabled?
Follow-Up Questions and Answers
Question
We have had Comcast for over 2 years now and have used the same modem as currently configured the whole time. I just logged into the modem directly (laptop -> Ethernet port on Comcast Modem instead of accessing through our network equipment) and there was a setting to disable “smart packet screening” or something similar, but not exactly “smartpack”. I disabled the smart packet setting and restarted the modem, without any luck. I also used the diagnostics in the modem webmin interface and was unable to ping http://www.modernretail.com (but could ping www.google.com), so the problem must be upstream of the modem, eliminating anything downstream inside our LAN.
Let me know if you have any other thoughts. I’ll probably leave it alone over the holiday weekend and see if it’s happy on Monday. If so, I’ll assume it was some gremlin of the interwebs that has moved on and note it in case it ever happens again.
UPDATE:
The issue self-resolved by Monday. I've experienced the same issue in other offices (that use Comcast) that I support and found that rebooting the networking equipment will fix it immediately as well.
Until it happened, I assumed the problem was unique to the other office I do work for... now I realize that it is likely a Comcast anomaly in general.
Answer
I would encourage you to call Comcast if the problem does not resolved itself over the weekend.
Date Created: 11/27/13
Question
We can't get our website or modern retail to pull up. Eeeekkkkk! Help! It just spins it's wheels and times out....we've tried IE, Firefox, and Google Chrome and the same thing happens on all 4 of our computers....
Answer
I did a reverse lookup on your store's IP and it looks like you are using Comcast. I believe you are having a problem with your Comcast router or internet connection. While we haven't had this problem since 2009, you are the second client who's had it in the last 30 days.
I'm sorry but we cannot solve this problem for you and you must contact Comcast; however, please let us know how it goes and we'll see if we can help from this side. Thank you.
Date Created: 12/20/13