Thanks, Giuseppe!
Yes, I am using Vray but it is not the latest version and I therefore can't use certain .vismat materials due to version incompatibility.
Just a final update on the matter.
I tried connecting at home this morning before going to work and there was still no luck.
I then tried at work and had no problem at connecting to the KT site.
A colleague of mine who also uses KT and frequents the KT forums told me that he couldn't connect at home either.
So it looks like connecting via a proxy server is at least working for us.
Still think its really weird though!?!?!