Sky blames network problems for site blocking Sky broadband has blamed network problems, not censorship, for customers's inability to get onto RapidShare and other sites, mostly related to file sharing. The problems last week led to hysterical emails and forum posts accusing Sky of "censoring the internet". Image files from Wordpress also fell foul of Sky's apparent fault …
Proboards were totally blocked too and this post from one of their admins seems to suggest that they were indeed blocked rather than "the wires have come out the back" (which was the exact excuse one engineer gave to someone who called sky's help centre):
http://support.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=support&thread=349192&post=3946476
There are numerous examples of all of rapidshare being blocked by the IWF. Only that's not really true.
The problem lies with the proxy implementation at the ISP. Sky/UKOnline/Easynet fucked this up. As have O2/Be, although they may have fixed theirs now.
TL;DR is that they block the entire IP address which is, with only a few seconds thought, a STUNNINGLY bad idea.
Anyone wants to see examples of Rapidshare/A.N.Other site being blocked just go look at the relevant forums on www.thinkbroadband.com. You'll find hundreds of instances of it happening.
This started YEARS ago. It happens pretty much every time the IWF update their list.
I tried to complain about this to the IWF - along the lines of "this ISP is misusing your data". However the IWF will not discuss policy (or anything else) with anyone other than the govt. Even ISPs are clueless as to what's on the list. In theory there is a designated person at each ISP who is actually allowed to see the list. In practice nobody in their right mind wants that task.
Welcome to the UK in 2010.
because icanhascheezburger.com is a well-known file sharing site</sarcasm>
though the guy a couple of comments up could be right - specifically one of the things blocked* was a wordpress server used for serving images - if the issue is blocks are being applied per-hostname or per-IP instead of per-URL, that could explain it. still nothing to do with traffic shaping though
*I used the work "block" because the symptoms were the webserver you tried to connect to appeared to return an "Error 500 internal server error" page... whether or not it was a misbehaving transparent proxy or filtering proxy or whatever, it's definately a blocking of the traffic rather than a simple misrouting / dropping-it-on-the-floor
During the 'outage' a certain wesite was blocked, but a subset of the same website (upload.website.com) was freely accessible.
Using the ip address (n.n.n.n) didn't work, and using a port modifier (website.com:8080) didn't either. Didn't actually try https for some reason.
Pinging the site returned packets without issue or delay. Strange, that, if it was an outage, no?
A proxy server worked perfectly.
Might be a real mistake now but when this bill passes in the uk rapidshare and all sites @ 1201am will be blocked by the isp and any other site that helps facilitate sharing of copyrights.
its full of crap but your going to find all access to these sites restricted and when you fly at the isp
waiting for the issue to be resolved they will tell you sorry the law now requires us to block access on our network and thats that done.
Want to know more then google about the Digital Economy bill ready to be rushed though Parliament
The way it works is that if a dns query matches the "offending" site's IP address then the traffic is diverted to a proxy server. The proxy is basically remote-loaded with the IWF filter list.
Now this is where the problems occur. Some ISPs just block the IP address as its WAY cheaper. They should of course parse the filtered address PROPERLY.
The basic problem of course is that we have a QUANGO (IWF) who are in fact answerable to nobody. Anyone who questions it is instantly suspect for we must think of the children. The fact that any paedophile with half a brain doesn't use the web for contacts is irrelevant. Think of the children.
Oh and only people we approve of can see our list, but all must use it.
UK 2010.
For a start the Mandelscum brigade cannot just block all the file hosting sites ,infact before it was allowed to request isp's to them they would have to get court orders for each site and therefore would need some substantial amount of proof, and the file host would also be given a chance to remove the copyrighted material beforehand
Also you lot never heard of encrypted vpn services?oh and they would not ever block those,as firstly they would have to prove that there sole use was copyright infringement,
as for getting you details from the vpn(if overseas) are very slim,
As for file sharers being FREETARDS ? Strange that , i would say that they have plenty of common sense,as they aren't lining the pockets of the filthy rich there is nothing better than FREE!!!
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