How to get round a national DNS block

[CoolBee]

In Egypt, our DNS servers were blocked so unless you knew the direct IP of a website, eg Twitter or Facebook, you could not access it.
Our internets were blocked for almost a week by this means.

See how an entire country dropped off the face of the netiverse within 4 hours:



Anyway, if you knew the direct IPs you might still be able to get through as our connections were still officially live (but not going anywhere!)

To use - type the number directly into your browser where you would normally type the url

Facebook can be got here: 66.220.153.25

Twitter can be got here: 128.242.240.52

You can use this site to help find the direct number of your favourite locations:

Find IP address of a website - server ip lookup

(eg stevepavlina.com = 207.58.129.25)

It's not perfect, but do it now before YOUR country drops you offline!

If you care about democracy pass these numbers on especially if you know any Algerians right now!

[elucidate]

Good to see you are with us still coolbee.

A few people were wondering about your safety, but it sounds like you are ok.

What's going on there from your perspective?

[CoolBee]

Originally Posted by elucidate

Good to see you are with us still coolbee.

A few people were wondering about your safety, but it sounds like you are ok.

What's going on there from your perspective?

Thanks.

I wrote quite a bit in the Egypt thread which is a couple of posts below this at the moment so won't regurgitate it here. Personally, I haven't been in physical danger.

However, it has been very very stressful from the 'not knowing' point of view, staying positive for friends and family, fending off others who would overexaggerate or - as a friend put it - over-awfulize - stories they heard and try to pass them on. I offended at least one expat by refusing to pass on a horror story which I'm glad I did because another friend traced it back to source and it had been so embellished as to bear no resemblance to what happened.

By around a week ago, quite a lot of us noticed that we were suffering from symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress - constant nagging headache, irritability, getting angry at the smallest things, unable to 'get' jokes - taking everything very literally unless it had a big sign on it saying 'joke', some were not sleeping and having bad dreams based on the tv and so on.

At the moment, as you probably all know now, Mubarak did leave yesterday and handed over to the military. I was having a nap and awoke to gunfire, so raced to the tv, it either had to be the best news or the worst. Anyway, guns firing into the air, car horns tooting for hours.

Fabulous scenes in Tahrir - I wish I could have been there, but foreigners really had to stay away, not only for potential safety reasons, but also because this had to be 100% Egyptian and not lend credence to claims being put out by State TV that foreigners caused all this.

Many Egyptians obviously overjoyed. That said, many are also a bit fearful of the future - something like half of all Egyptians are under 30 and have never known anything other than the Mubarak regime and all that accompanied it.

Some have bought into the 'if he goes, the country will descend into chaos' rhetoric. Egyptians need to learn to trust each other and have shown over the past few weeks that they can do all those things they have spent years telling themselves they can't.

Today, the Armed Forces have been ensconced with a constitutional court with judges and so on in working out the next steps, how to govern from now until free elections and when those can occur.

They issued a communique a couple of hours ago - basically saying that they will honour international treaties and that the ministers in post will stay in post for now.

We are expecting another communique later today at some point.

Pray, intend, manifest, 'clean' (ho'oponopono) for a peaceful future.

[sorter]

Good to know.

I think if you get the IP of a proxy server you would then be able
to use regular DNS names. Not 100% sure.
They'd need to be outside of the blocked country, of course.

Google "free proxy servers".

Update:
List of Free Proxy Servers Sorted By Country - Page 1 of 6
lists proxies
Most IPs don't work because they're getting relayed via the site host.
This 80.83.122.42 (runfreeproxy.com) did work.
I'm guessing you'd have more luck with proxies in Germany or The Netherlands.
.

[CoolBee]

Originally Posted by sorter

Good to know.

I think if you get the IP of a proxy server you would then be able
to use regular DNS names. Not 100% sure.
They'd need to be outside of the blocked country, of course.

Google "free proxy servers".

Update:
List of Free Proxy Servers Sorted By Country - Page 1 of 6
lists proxies
Most IPs don't work because they're getting relayed via the site host.
This 80.83.122.42 (runfreeproxy.com) did work.
I'm guessing you'd have more luck with proxies in Germany or The Netherlands.
.

We were using proxies and as soon as they were found and spread around, they were getting blocked. The authorities were maybe an hour behind the geeks! Even using things like hotshield or whatever because you couldnt resolve the name at all.

I know from past experience that a proxy that works one day is often inoperable the next so the few numbers I did find from previous experiments no longer worked.

If you can get directly to the sites, it's better.

Unfortunately things were shut down so swiftly - we never imagined that they would basically turn the whole internet off - that we were caught on the hop too late to get up to date proxy numbers. (I'm talking 'normal' people now, not those who probably were prepared for this).

That's why I'm highlighting it now - it could happen to YOU!!!

A friend in Algeria did say to me, but it's quiet and we have Facebook - I said you obviously haven't been watching the news (he's at work - they're arresting people and lobbing tear gas around) - and Algerians are already complaining access to Twitter and Facebook is slowing dramatically. I said just copy the numbers, it took just 4 hours to close Egypt down.

PS Many in Egypt connect to the internet using USB dongles as in many parts of the country there is little landline infrastructure. I have tried before putting things like OpenDNS on there, but as soon as you connect, the ISP overwrites to it's own again. Must try putting it directly into the browser somehow! Shall do that this evening.

PPS Why Twitter and Facebook - these are the quickest ways of spreading stuff around. EG when we were offline, my sister and mum called me each 12 hours and my sister updated my FB wall daily - and if I managed to get news about other people, I would get her to say 'heard from Bloggs and John Doe, and they have spoken to Jane Doe and Mohamed Doe' or whatever so the news could be spread quickly.

[sorter]

Originally Posted by CoolBee

We were using proxies and as soon as they were found and spread around, they were getting blocked. The authorities were maybe an hour behind the geeks! Even using things like hotshield or whatever because you couldnt resolve the name at all.

I know from past experience that a proxy that works one day is often inoperable the next so the few numbers I did find from previous experiments no longer worked.

If you can get directly to the sites, it's better.

Unfortunately things were shut down so swiftly - we never imagined that they would basically turn the whole internet off - that we were caught on the hop too late to get up to date proxy numbers. (I'm talking 'normal' people now, not those who probably were prepared for this).

That's why I'm highlighting it now - it could happen to YOU!!!

A friend in Algeria did say to me, but it's quiet and we have Facebook - I said you obviously haven't been watching the news (he's at work - they're arresting people and lobbing tear gas around) - and Algerians are already complaining access to Twitter and Facebook is slowing dramatically. I said just copy the numbers, it took just 4 hours to close Egypt down.

PS Many in Egypt connect to the internet using USB dongles as in many parts of the country there is little landline infrastructure. I have tried before putting things like OpenDNS on there, but as soon as you connect, the ISP overwrites to it's own again. Must try putting it directly into the browser somehow! Shall do that this evening.

Interesting.
No one thought to block IPs or is that even feasible?
Either way, it looks like blocking the net backfired. I'd be mighty pissed.
But that wouldn't happen in the United States of America!

Your revolution was amazing.
It seems like there will be a successful transition to civilian rule. Cautious hope.
.

[CoolBee]

They probably will block IPs next time (well I mean if this happens again anywhere). I think they were a bit new at this so just took out the DNS.

I think even if people are aware methods like these are available it can help so they know what they're looking for.

A page of loads of methods was posted up but the blog is deleted.

[Brutha]

No one thought to block IPs or is that even feasible?

They started to block IPs but then Facebook switched IPs to circumvent the IP ban.
Then they switched to blocking the DNS server.

The best solution for proxy are private proxies. Proxies that aren't publically available but that you either pay for or that are hosted by friends.

The second best solution is Tor. Tor is relatively slow but can either be reasonable well censored with DNS blocks or with IP blocks.
If you live outside of Algeria you can help Tor to work better. https://www.torproject.org/getinvolv...unteer.html.en provides a summary of different option and everyone who has an internet flatrate can help without much cost.

[Alessandro]

I think it is the best way to cut off all the public from the rest of the world.....every government would like to do these steps whenever it will be confronted theses circumstances.