Virgin Media Blocking Techwatch

[cockneysean]

I heard from a couple of people that they can't access the site unless they use a proxy when they are trying to connect from VM.

Has anyone else experienced this? Seems fine for me, but I just wondered if anyone else has experienced this.

[lucus]

hi
yes ive had this problem recently any ideas what excactly is going on? also whats a proxy as its just been working intermitantly havent actually been changing anything?

[cockneysean]

A proxy server is a machine that performs all of your web requests for you.

For example, without a proxy, when you enter Techwatch Tech News: Satellite TV, Cable TV, Digital TV, Home Media and Hardware into your web browser, your computer contacts techwatch directly and downloads the web pages from the techwatch server.

When you use a proxy server, you enter techwatch.co.uk into your web browser, this request is then passed on to the proxy server which then downloads the web page and then forwards it on to you.

This is handy when your network blocks certain sites and networks. It also makes it appear that you are browsing from the proxy server. Say the proxy server is in France, as mine is, the owner of the website that you are browsing will think that you are browsing from france, when in fact you are not!

Hope that helps.

[lucus]

o rite so how does vm moniter this then and block the website? are they the proxy?

[cockneysean]

Well no they aren't the proxy, but they own the network.

They own routers, just like the router that you may have in your own home, just more complex and advanced.

In your own router you can block access to certain websites, say, to stop your kids accessing certain websites. Virgin can do the same thing with their routers and block access to any site that they want to, so if they decide to block access to techwatch, they just configure their routers as such.

[lucus]

o rite i understand chears

[jonnie22265]

Yes same problem here north lanarkshire no techwatch for 2 days have to use sky to log on here

[earthworm]

ive also had problems lately.other day it said something like,you haven't got access to this forum/error port 80 or something like that.so i googled port 80 and it said port 80 was what your server uses to 'listen' to internet traffic so i wondered/panicked that vm had got wise and cut off access to the site.a case of big brother is watchin you.although,having now read a few threads this doesn't seem to be the case.

[Robbo]

Virgin have not blocked access to this site. The problem was due to DNS tables taking a while to get updated.

If Virgin did block access to certain perfectly legal sites, I imagine that they would lose customers big time.

[/24]

Yeah it will just be stale dns records pointing at the wrong address as they will have been cached for as long as the time to live value that the authoritive server for techwatch has set so you will have to wait for this ttl value to expire before the server that has cached it will go back and ask the authoritive server what the correct address is