USING A VIRGIN MEDIA PROXY? HOTFILE.COM PROBLEMS?

okay so this is an interesting one....
Cant seem to get to hotfile.com at all...tried multiple devices/laptops/mobile phones none can get to that site using my network .I Can ping the site fine can do a trace fine it all works. ( Hot file used to work fine, stopped working since getting a new ip and being moved over to overlay network)

I Try and load hotfile.com in a browser and nothing loads.

Anyway seems like lots of Virgin Users have this issue. So I thought I would ring techincal support they told me to go to enable proxy in firefox and use port 8080
and webcache.virginmedia.com as the proxy and shockingly it now works?

but my question is why does it work all of a sudden now? my other devices still cant get to it without the proxy? What are the disadvantages of going through a proxy? Should I just use the proxy for this site then disable it for others?

Thanks

UPDATE: just put https://hotfile.com and with NO PROXY it works now?

Edited by j112 (Sat 16-Oct-10 19:43:26)

I don't know if it is the case here but frequently problems accessing file hosting sites are because one of their files has been included on the IWF kiddy-fiddling list and the ISP IWF filtering screws things up. That said I'm on VM, don't use their proxy, and can access hotfile.com no problem at all right now.

its been problematic for months, Virgin first claimed it was an IWF issue then claimed it wasnt and it was at Hotfiles end so there was no clear answer.