Anyone have issues with their ISP blocking RetroPie?

Tango

I live in the boonies in Virginia and suddenly, last night, I had trouble connecting to this website. I ran a lot of tests and had weird results. In the end, I can connect here with mobile devices if I use a cell connection instead of my wifi. I can connect if I use a VPN, but I cannot connect with my normal desktop-to-lan-to-isp-router connection.

I mentioned I'm in the boonies. I have limited choices for internet service. I can go with the really bad conventional satellite service or a broadband-over-cell service, which I use now. Generally it's been great (or much better than what I had - still waiting for Starlink). I have a support call in to the ISP to see what's going on.

Has anyone had issues with an ISP blocking this site? Or has anyone heard of similar issues?

mitu

We rarely have reports from users having problems downloading the RetroPie image - but note that's hosted outsite the site, on the Github's CDN servers (hosted on Amazon).
What's the IP address (or net block) that doesn't work ?

Tango

IP address: 93.93.129.253

Odd - once I post this, through a VPN, I test it out again and I can reach the site. That's weird.

On the other hand, as I said, I called my ISP about it. I even stated the name of the site and said, "There's nothing illegal on it, in fact, the forums have express rules about not discussing anything illegal." So maybe one of the reps got my voicemail and said, "Let me check on this," and may have resolved it without telling me.

I'm just hoping the site doesn't "disappear" again.

mitu

@Tango said in Anyone have issues with their ISP blocking RetroPie?:

93.93.129.253

OK, that's the RetroPie's network address - I was asking for your IP netblock just to check if it hasn't been blacklisted (spam and/or DDOS prevention) on the RetroPie site.

But anyway, if it works now it might not have been on the RP side. Keep an eye on it and let us know if you have problems accessing the forum.

Tango

@mitu : Okay, got it. Misunderstood. I thought maybe RP had multiple servers, so you wanted to know which one I was being directed to (or not being directed to). I noticed that while I could not reach it, I could ping it. I had friends in the northern part of Virginia and in California try the site and they connected with no problem.

If I find I'm blocked again, I'll be sure and let you know.

I do know that I have to deal with a few oddities, since I'm technically on a mobile carrier. For instance, Hulu Live won't work with me because the ISP is listed as "mobile" and my Apple TV is considered a non-mobile device, so Hulu won't let me use Apple TV in my own home because it considers me mobile. So I thought, for a bit, that RP might have a concern about some mobile user issues.

Tango

I take it back. It was working for about an hour (maybe half an hour). What’s odd is that happened last night - no access through my ISP, then, at some point, for a while, I could reach this site.

My current IP address is 107.77.xxx.xxx. I’m using my iPad to log in. What’s odd is that I am sometimes able to log in through a VPN, and sometimes not. The VPN I’m using now is using 199.1889.26.xxx as it’s IP address. That’s in Canada. I’ve tried using them with the VPN coming out in different cities and it seems, more and more, that the VPN connections are blocked.

This is just absurd! It’s like someone is watching me and intentionally trying to block me from this one specific site.

Tango

Is it possible to find out what might block someone from this site? I realized I have about 10 or more tabs open in Chrome to this site and I don’t know if they’re static or not, so I’m wondering if those pages could be sending back enough HTTP requests to lead to my IP address being blocked.

mitu

I don't think there's something on the forum that's blocking. I see a couple of 107.77 addresses used by your account in the past (from the moderator panel), so this address is not blocked here - it was possible to access the site from that net block 5 days ago.

Tango

@mitu : I appreciate your help on this. I know it may be hard to track it down and find what's going on, but it's just so weird.

It seems like I can access the board from 1-2 AM, EST (GMT-5hours), so I've wondered if there might be an issue with something on my computer, so the address is blocked, then unblocked, as a "check," then blocked again because I might have some kind of malware or something on my system.

That would also explain why I can use a VPN to another city, access the site for a while, then not access it after a few times - that my computer is doing something bad that forces the site to block me.

I checked the window I was using for retro gaming and had 20 tabs open to this site. A friend suggested if the pages aren't static and are phoning home, that might be seen as heavy usage or something, which might also lead to blocking.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but trying to figure out what might be going on. Since I'm sometimes blocked (and sometimes not) through proxies/VPNs, and I can get on with my iPad, it seems my home LAN or desktop is the common factor.

mitu

This post is deleted!

mitu

@Tango said in Anyone have issues with their ISP blocking RetroPie?:

I checked the window I was using for retro gaming and had 20 tabs open to this site. A friend suggested if the pages aren't static and are phoning home, that might be seen as heavy usage or something, which might also lead to blocking.

Try using less tabs opened on the forum and see if your connection stays reliable. I think we may have some anti-bot filtering on the site and opening multiple tabs at once (i.e. on browser startup) may have an impact on this.

Tango

@mitu: I suspect that you're right, it's some kind of bot filtering, but I'd go a bit father. My browser was left open for a few days, so I don't think it's just when you open the tabs. Since some pages, especially forum pages, phone home to check on updates, I think the site is aware of the multiple connections.

Thanks!