Re: IP Block - Canberra Grammar School

Hi Ben,

The block times out after a certain number of hours. I’m not certain how
many hours but I believe it’s 2 hours or so. But if after the block expires
the same pattern of requests is made, the IP will get blocked again.

So the solution is to either ensure that pattern of requests doesn’t get
made again, or to run your own instance of the validator, and to have the
students use that instead during the lesson.

The instructions for running your own instance of validator are here:

  https://validator.github.io/validator/#web-based-checking

The steps are pretty simple:

1. Download a vnu.jar release from one of the following places:

   - https://github.com/validator/validator/releases/latest
   - https://sideshowbarker.net/releases/jar/

2. Invoke the vnu.jar file on some host on your network like this:

     java -cp ~/vnu.jar nu.validator.servlet.Main 8888

That will cause the validator to be accessible from port 8888 on that host.
For example, if you install it on a machine named intranet.cgs.act.edu.au,
then students would find the validator UI here:

   http://intranet.cgs.act.edu.au:8888

Of course that requires you have access to some host like that to run it
on (or can ask your IT staff to run it on a host for you).

Note that it also requires the latest version of the Java runtime (Java 8) to
be installed on the host. I will not run on a system with Java 7 or earlier.

  —Mike

Ben Hegarty <Ben.Hegarty@cgs.act.edu.au>, 2016-02-15 02:52 +0000:
> 
> Hi Mike,
> 
> It appears that our school has been blocked from using the W3C validator. As part of our web development class today, we were teaching our students how to use the validator to debug their code and ensure it complies to the w3 standards. About 30 minutes into the lesson we got IP blocked due to "suspected abuse".
> 
> Can you please let me know how we can get our IP unblocked so we can continue using your site:
> 
> Our school’s IP address is 113.197.9.242.
> 
> Kind Regards,
> Ben Hegarty
> 
> Web Development Teacher
> Canberra Grammar School

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith https://people.w3.org/mike