Qsl.net availability

Qsl.net availability

[John Coppens]

Hello people.

Since a few months, I cannot connect to www.qsl.net from where I live
(Argentina). I can connect with FTP, but not in HTTP (webpages). I can
ping www.qsl.net, Not only I can't connect to my own page, but I cannot
connect to any of the webpages at QSL.NET.

I am not ruling out a configuration problem in my Linux machine, but I
cannot find out why this is the _only_ site I cannot connect to.

I traced (using ethereal and tcpdump) the connection request, and found
that DNS resolution is fine (else the ping wouldn't have worked), but when
requesting the first HTTP item, no reply comes back.

Can anyone please indicate me what's wrong?

73,
John

Re: Qsl.net availability

[Dave Platt]

John Coppens <john@jcoppens.com> wrote:
> Hello people.
> 
> Since a few months, I cannot connect to www.qsl.net from where I live
> (Argentina). I can connect with FTP, but not in HTTP (webpages). I can
> ping www.qsl.net, Not only I can't connect to my own page, but I cannot
> connect to any of the webpages at QSL.NET.

This site comes up just fine for me, here in California.

> I am not ruling out a configuration problem in my Linux machine, but I
> cannot find out why this is the _only_ site I cannot connect to.

One possibility is that the WWW.QSL.NET server machine is blocking
TCP connections from your IP address range.

I'm sorry to say that Argentina's ISPs are in very bad odor with
quite a few system administrators in North America.  This is due
to the large number of spammers, spammers' web sites, virus- and
trojan-horse-infected client systems, "script kiddies" probing
for security vulnerabilities, etc. found on Argentina's networks,
and to the apparent unwillingness of the ISPs involved to respond
to reports of these abuses or to take any visible steps to clean
up their networks.

A fair number of fed-up administrators have started blocking all
inbound email from the LACNIC IP space assigned to Argentina.  Some
have even blocked all inbound TCP traffic from Argentina at their
border routers.  This may, possibly, be what is affecting you.

Argentina's not alone in this sort of treatment.  Quite a few
USA ISPs (in particular, some of the big cable-modem and DSL
providers) are facing similar forms of "prophylactic blocking"
by sysadmins who are fed up with floods of abuse from
slackly-managed ISPs.

Another possibility is that there's some sort of fairly selective
routing problem involved.  What do you see if you run the command
"/usr/sbin/traceroute www.qsl.net" from your Linux system?

Re: Qsl.net availability

[John Coppens]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 15:40:16 -0700 (PDT)
Dave Platt <dplatt@radagast.org> wrote:

> John Coppens <john@jcoppens.com> wrote:
> > Hello people.
> > 
> > Since a few months, I cannot connect to www.qsl.net from where I live
> > (Argentina). I can connect with FTP, but not in HTTP (webpages). I can
> > ping www.qsl.net, Not only I can't connect to my own page, but I
> > cannot connect to any of the webpages at QSL.NET.
> 
> This site comes up just fine for me, here in California.

Hi Dave... Thanks for replying.

I gathered that other people were not having problems. And I tried to get
the page indirectly - through the w3c validation service, so I know the
server is actually up.

> > I am not ruling out a configuration problem in my Linux machine, but I
> > cannot find out why this is the _only_ site I cannot connect to.
> 
> One possibility is that the WWW.QSL.NET server machine is blocking
> TCP connections from your IP address range.
> ...
> I'm sorry to say that Argentina's ISPs are in very bad odor with
> quite a few system administrators in North America.  This is due
> to the large number of spammers, spammers' web sites, virus- and
> trojan-horse-infected client systems, "script kiddies" probing
> for security vulnerabilities, etc. found on Argentina's networks,
> and to the apparent unwillingness of the ISPs involved to respond
> to reports of these abuses or to take any visible steps to clean
> up their networks.

I agree, and I could understand the blocking of e-mails up to a certain
point, but I cannot really get why HTTP access is denied (port 80).

> Another possibility is that there's some sort of fairly selective
> routing problem involved.  What do you see if you run the command
> "/usr/sbin/traceroute www.qsl.net" from your Linux system?

I think 256 ms isn't that bad considering the long route. Here's the
traceroute output:

 1  200.3.62.232 (200.3.62.232)  55.182 ms  54.455 ms  52.888 ms
 2  33.39.3.200.telecom.net.ar (200.3.39.33)  54.702 ms  54.404 ms  56.381
ms 
 3  137.37.3.200.telecom.net.ar (200.3.37.137)  64.321 ms  60.85 ms 
64.636 ms 
 4  93.37.3.200.telecom.net.ar (200.3.37.93)  66.279 ms  67.766
ms  66.221 ms 
 5  cog01ri-pos16-0-0.tasf.telecom.net.ar (200.3.32.134) 
65.934 ms  67.774 ms  66.18 ms 
 6  bai1-telecom-argentina-2-ar.bai.seabone.net (195.22.220.37)  64.486 ms
64.302 ms  67.876 ms 
 7  new4-new2-racc1.new.seabone.net (195.22.216.30) 
206.869 ms  209.841 ms  207.15 ms
 8  500.POS4-0.GW1.EWR6.ALTER.NET (157.130.222.169)  225.093 ms  223.149
ms  228.51 ms
 9 0.so-4-0-0.CL2.EWR6.ALTER.NET (152.63.16.86)  230.348 ms 
223.489 ms 221.925 ms
 10  0.so-1-2-0.XL2.NYC4.ALTER.NET (152.63.21.13) 
218.39 ms 219.988 ms  222.167 ms
 11  0.so-7-0-0.BR1.NYC4.ALTER.NET (152.63.21.81) 218.141 ms  218.509 ms 
220.205 ms
 12  204.255.168.2(204.255.168.2) 218.735 ms  226.79 ms  218.439 ms
 13  tbr2-p011601.n54ny.ip.att.net (12.123.3.61)  221.951 ms  223.223 ms
225.202 ms
 14  tbr2-cl1.wswdc.ip.att.net (12.122.10.54)  223.58 ms  235.23
ms  224.955 ms
 15  gbr5-p40.wswdc.ip.att.net (12.122.11.186)  228.544 ms 226.64 ms 
223.45 ms
 16  ar1-p310.btmmd.ip.att.net (12.123.194.65) 227.083 ms 274.468 ms 
251.756 ms
 17  12.119.70.98 (12.119.70.98) 230.046 ms 228.45 ms  228.579 ms
 18  162.33.163.103 (162.33.163.103) 228.351 ms 228.416 ms 231.548 ms
 19  162.33.101.253 (162.33.101.253) 240.198 ms 231.899 ms 233.243 ms
 20  ***
 21  wboc-dmv.dmv.com (64.45.129.209) 233.701 ms 231.396 ms 232.031 ms
 22 wboc-att.dmv.com (64.45.144.145) 233.534 ms 231.64 ms 232.045 ms
 23 laurel-gw.dmv.com (64.45.129.81) 233.298 ms 231.672 ms 235.25 ms
 24 www3.qsl.net (64.238.2.153)  261.631 ms  307.556 ms  258.162 ms

73,
John

Re: Qsl.net availability

[John R. Marshall]

On Wednesday 14 April 2004 05:27 pm, John Coppens wrote:
> Hello people.
>
> Since a few months, I cannot connect to www.qsl.net from where I live
> (Argentina). I can connect with FTP, but not in HTTP (webpages). I can
> ping www.qsl.net, Not only I can't connect to my own page, but I cannot
> connect to any of the webpages at QSL.NET.

They had some problems with some hackers from Brazil so they blocked a bunch 
of Brazilian IP's. I'll bet you got caught up in that.

here's a thread on qrz.com about it

http://www.qrz.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?s=407dc024199effff;act=ST;f=7;t=59541



-- 
John R. Marshall - KC9ETP

Re: Qsl.net availability

[Scott Lambert]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2004 at 05:56:49PM -0500, John R. Marshall wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 April 2004 05:27 pm, John Coppens wrote:
> > Hello people.
> >
> > Since a few months, I cannot connect to www.qsl.net from where I live
> > (Argentina). I can connect with FTP, but not in HTTP (webpages). I can
> > ping www.qsl.net, Not only I can't connect to my own page, but I cannot
> > connect to any of the webpages at QSL.NET.
> 
> They had some problems with some hackers from Brazil so they blocked a bunch 
> of Brazilian IP's. I'll bet you got caught up in that.
> 
> here's a thread on qrz.com about it
> 
> http://www.qrz.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?s=407dc024199effff;act=ST;f=7;t=59541

If it turns out not to be a firewall issue, check your MTU.

-- 
Scott Lambert                    KC5MLE                       Unix SysAdmin
lambert@lambertfam.org       http://www.lambertfam.org/~lambert/resume.html

Re: Qsl.net availability

[Ralf Baechle DL5RB]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 12:00:55AM -0400, Scott Lambert wrote:

> > They had some problems with some hackers from Brazil so they blocked a bunch 
> > of Brazilian IP's. I'll bet you got caught up in that.
> > 
> > here's a thread on qrz.com about it
> > 
> > http://www.qrz.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?s=407dc024199effff;act=ST;f=7;t=59541
> 
> If it turns out not to be a firewall issue, check your MTU.

The MTU problem would hit only after the connection is established.
Typically that is caused by clueless admin blocking all ICMP, including
icmp_fragmentation_needed packets which are required for PMTU discovery.

73 de DL5RB / ZZ5ZRB op Ralf

--
Loc. JN47BS / CQ 14 / ITU 28 / DOK A21

Re: Qsl.net availability

[Ariel Graneros]

A way to access to the contents is to use some anonymous proxy service such as http://proxify.com/. 

flame

This "security" measure is a very very bad idea, if they want to avoid hackers at all, why dont just cut the cables. All their security concerns will vanish for ever.

/flame