For several months I have been unable to access the main freebsd.org website, by either FQDN or IP address.
We can not debug if we don't know what the problem is. What exactly happens when you try to connect? Blank screen, waits forever, browser error message?
By the way, I just noticed: There is no real web server running on
http://freebsd.org. If you try to connect to it, it immediately forwards to
https://www.freebsd.org (note the "s" at the end of http). So when you say "the main freebsd.org web site", what site do you really go to?
Tried with Vivaldi, Firefox, Lynx, Safari and a couple of Android browsers.
On what OS? Safari must have been on MacOS or iOS, and Android browsers run on Android. But the first 3 could be on pretty much any OS.
On a Slackware machine dig freebsd.org resolves the IP address for the A name record.
To what? Something sensible? Here is what I get on my machine (I'm using host, not dig, just because the output is shorter, and I omitted the MX records to save space):
> host www.freebsd.org
www.freebsd.org is an alias for wfe0.nyi.freebsd.org.
wfe0.nyi.freebsd.org has address 96.47.72.84
> host freebsd.org
freebsd.org has address 96.47.72.84
traceroute doesn't get beyond my ISP.
That's not uncommon, many ISPs block trace route. You should use ping to test connectivity.
What happens when you do "telnet
www.freebsd.org 80", and speak a few lines of http protocol to it?
Any idea what the problem might be? IP address blocked, for some reason?
Could be. Strange ISPs have been known to do lots of strange things. Have you tried going to an internet cafe? Or taking your cell phone somewhere away from home?
That seems highly unlikely. There are lots of tech-savvy people on that island, and I bet quite a few of them run FreeBSD and visit the web site.
It's most perplexing and it reflects badly on freebsd.
Perplexing: Sure, but only until we actually start debugging it. Reflects badly? It is very likely user error or local configuration problem, nothing to do with FreeBSD itself.