good to know, thx

So... I was actually right when I said I was really unlucky to start mining and the server to go down immediately after that yesterday? and apparently today too.
I saw that but I thought maybe it's just a bug or something, because I was also getting alot of "Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC", I didn't expect the server to be down for maintenance right when I started mining. Then I played with bypassing the router and port fw and GUIMiner started working, by coincidence apparently. Heh...
It would be nice to have a "server online/offline" on the website.

Today the error is back (with port forwarding disabled)

Running command: poclbm.exe --user=xxxxxx  --pass=xxxxxxx -o mining.bitcoin.cz -p 8332 -d0 --verbose -v -w128
Listener for "Default" started
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:03:12, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:03:18, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:03:24, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:03:30, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:03:36, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:03:45, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:03:54, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:00, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:06, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:12, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:18, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:27, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:33, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:40, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:46, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:50, Server temporarily down for maintenance
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:04:56, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:02, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:13, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:19, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:20, Server temporarily down for maintenance
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:26, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:30, Server temporarily down for maintenance
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:35, Server temporarily down for maintenance
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:41, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC
Listener for "Default": 23/05/2011 11:05:47, Problems communicating with bitcoin RPC

turning on port fw doesn't fix the problem

Thanks for your replies.

I have disabled port forwarding and everything seems fine now. Does GUIMiner save logs somewhere so I can tell you the exact time or should I wait until it happens again (if) and take a note of it?  I only mine during the day, so maybe only tomorrow.

Hello bitcoin world.

I have no experience to this whole bitcoin thing, so I'm as noob as you can get.
I've started mining only yesterday and it's going almost great. I have one problem though, which I may have fixed on my own but I just wanted to check with you guys.

My problem is that while mining with GUIMiner (latest version), after a few minutes  I was getting a lot of connection problems and "server down for maintenance". At first I thought that I was just unlucky but then I connected my pc directly to the modem, bypassing the router, and it connected with no problems.  After a bit of searching today I've configured my router (netgear) to trigger port range 8332 to 8338 (the second one was just a guess, the first number I got using Tcpview.exe to see where the program was trying to connect).
 In the end this seems to have done it. What range exactly should I forward (if any)?

But I am no expert when it comes to networks and configuring port triggering and all this stuff. I don't even know if what I did helped or it works now just by coincidence.

 also, what's the normal % of stale/invalid shares? I seem to get about 1%.
 2nd: I got my key (wallet thingy) by installing the official bitcoin program which showed a "your Bitcoin Address" And I used that in the "My account" page. Is that ok?

Thanks