internet filter?

hi everyone,

i just encountered a strange thing, there is a website i visit from time to time to get some [classified information] recently the site seems to be broken, stylesheets are not displayed, site doesnt seem to load etc...

if i use a proxy pretending to be in another country (USA - **** YEAH) everything is fine...

if i try to ping the site with my real IP address i am getting a ping timeout

so - is it some sort of internet filter or is it an isp routing problem?

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Comments

techwizard

silly question but have you tried accessing the site from a different devices/hosts (ie, smartphone, tablet)? or even from a different ip address? (ie, friends house, starbucks, etc) do you get the same thing? It could simply be a isp routing/dns issue or something else.

YFZblu

Run a Geo-IP lookup of your current IP - What does it say?

martell1000

i tried it from my home ip which represents my country (germany), and from my phone which is on the same provider so i cannot tell if its a provider thing or an filter. but if i proxy out to an US ip or a vpn which leads into russia it works fine ...

i might wanna try another service provider since we usually do not have any internet filters here in germany

JeanM

Call your ISP and ask them , tracert stops where?

it_consultant

martell1000 wrote: »

hi everyone,

i just encountered a strange thing, there is a website i visit from time to time to get some [classified information] recently the site seems to be broken, stylesheets are not displayed, site doesnt seem to load etc...

if i use a proxy pretending to be in another country (USA - **** YEAH) everything is fine...

if i try to ping the site with my real IP address i am getting a ping timeout

so - is it some sort of internet filter or is it an isp routing problem?

I suspect the website is actually using a firewall that is filtering traffic based on the country of origin. When you impersonate the US it works fine, but if you use your own ISP the website will filter you off. This is not really and advanced technique. The Sophos UTM has location based filtering. Major websites use a form of this technology to make sure you can get only the digital content copyrighted for the country you are in. Servicemembers have to jump through hoops to watch Amazon prime with American TV shows if they are stationed in Germany.

martell1000

8 341 ms 340 ms 336 ms 112.121.160.58
9 337 ms 337 ms 340 ms 112.121.160.34
0 * * * Request timed out.

tracert stops there - its somewhere in hong kong - doesnt seem to be an internet filter.

@it consultant: its not one of those US streaming sites and it works fine from any country i impersonate via proxy or vpn, strang thing is that i see some fragments of the site, even actual posts there but the formating of the site is completely missing...

it_consultant

I understand it isn't a streaming site but using geo-location is a commonplace feature on websites - they use it to deliver the proper content, languages, etc. It stands to reason that the site could be filtering based on geo-location or farther out into the ISP. The NY Times starts blocking traffic a couple of hops out on their ISP.

colemic

martell1000 wrote: »

8 341 ms 340 ms 336 ms 112.121.160.58
9 337 ms 337 ms 340 ms 112.121.160.34
0 * * * Request timed out.

tracert stops there - its somewhere in hong kong - doesnt seem to be an internet filter.

@it consultant: its not one of those US streaming sites and it works fine from any country i impersonate via proxy or vpn, strang thing is that i see some fragments of the site, even actual posts there but the formating of the site is completely missing...

That sounds to me like some (but not all) of the content is being hosted somewhere other than the original site (Content Delivery Network.) The primary site is allowed, but the secondary 'feeder' sites are either being blocked or refusing the request to load content. That's my guess.