Although MINI2 is my most frequently visited (MINI related) web site, NAM (NorthAmericanMotoring) comes nicely second – both sites specialise in different areas, at least from my perspective.
The NE regional forum on MINI2 is very active & fun, and most of the MINI events I go to are planned there.
NorthAmericanMotoring seems to focus more on performance mods (engine/suspension/etc) and also has some good discussions on upgrading stereo systems – more indepth than the similar discussions on MINI2.
But since the weekend, I have been unable to access NAM – it seems to be a routing or firewall problem within “theplanet” that hosts it:
C:Documents and SettingsOwner>tracert http://www.northamericanmotoring.com
Tracing route to http://www.northamericanmotoring.com [69.93.166.248] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 37 ms 14 ms 10 ms
…
6 21 ms 19 ms * unk-426d0e99.adelphiacom.net [66.109.14.153]
7 18 ms 19 ms * p1-00-00-00.a0.cdp00.adelphiacom.net [66.109.1.46]
8 25 ms 24 ms * p3-02-00-00.r0.nyc90.adelphiacom.net [66.109.1.21]
9 60 ms 65 ms 67 ms p3-02-00-00.c1.chi75.adelphiacom.net [66.109.0.101]
10 84 ms 83 ms 87 ms p3-01-01-00.c1.dfw91.adelphiacom.net [66.109.0.66]
11 85 ms 84 ms 84 ms g1-03-02-00.p0.dfw91.adelphiacom.net [66.109.3.78]
12 85 ms 99 ms 83 ms eq-dallas-1000M.theplanet.com [206.223.118.3]
13 133 ms 83 ms 88 ms dist-vlan31.dsr3-2.dllstx3.theplanet.com [70.85.127.30]
14 87 ms 86 ms 84 ms dist-vlan21.dsr1-1.dllstx2.theplanet.com [70.85.127.67]
15 89 ms 85 ms 83 ms car4-1-v2.dllstx2.theplanet.com [12.96.160.49]
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
…
Trace complete.
I tried contacting “theplanet” and they very unhelpfully suggested I contact the website(!); luckily I was able to contact Mark Ferguson (who runs NAM) – he very quickly replied and confirmed that I am not the only person having issues and he also believes the problem is within “theplanet”.
So hopefully the issues will be identified and resolved soon; meantime I’ll have to check NAM from the office 😉
M&I / GBMINI 
hmmmm
Here in SoCal on Comcast, I haven’t had any problems accessing it. Sounds strangely like a DNS issues to me. I really hate those. No, really 🙂
I’ve been trying to get to NAM for 3-4 days now and I’m getting nowhere.
I heven’t been able to get NAM for 4 days……
I’m having the same problem at home. I can still access NAM at work. I found a posting on a web server hosting forum saying that the folks at “theplanet” are aware of the problem and are working to resolve the problem.
The problem is also not a DNS issue, it’s a screwed up router issue.
The issue is now resolved – for me at least. I think it should be fixed for everyone now … thanks to Mark Ferguson @ NAM for chasing it down and getting it sorted out.
Problem disappeared and all was golden …. until a few hours ago, that is. Can’t connect again.
I am still OK accessing NAM from Adelphia here …
Whatever or wherever the problem was, it is now gone; accessing NAM without a problem
GP: I mentioned your problem on the NAM thread and Mark replied: I had the problem reappear this afternoon after doing some maintenance on our server. It should be resolved now though
with the number of people who have been thrown off this site for what I consider to be bogus reasons, added to the number of threads which have disappeared for similarly stupid reasons, plus the heavy handedness of a select few of the moderators, I don’t go to that site much anymore anyway, Jock