FALSE ALARM!
Thanks to all those who reported.The site is fine and it appears a problem crept into my ADSL router at home, reset to factory defaults and reconfigured. I can access it fine now, although why originally I couldn’t connect to it normally but can through a proxy is mystery I would like to understand.We now have a plausible explanation. Thanks e.
Ok, stand down troops. It’s AOK so far
— mahmood (just back from a fantastic GT Race!)
Can you guys let me know whether you can access Mahmood’s Den (this site) ok from Bahrain? I cannot access my own site directly, I have to go through a proxy to do so. Although I did contact Batelco and they swear that it is NOT blocked and it loads with them, however they say it is very slow. It is blazingly fast through the proxy though.
The tech support in the States of the host say there is no problem accessing it from there. The problem with me is that I cannot access my server hosted sites through http nor ssh.
Weird.
Anyway I’m off to the GT Championships now and will check again tonight.
Don’t panic (yet). Maybe there is a plausible explanation for this behaviour.
Oh by the way, Akhbar Al-Khaleej reports this morning that there are many more sites are going to be blocked (other than the 40 blocked over the past couple of days) citing “abusive posts about the government or its leaders” as an excuse for doing so.
Have a look at the brilliant post at Silverooo, now THAT is the epitome of hypocrisy!
Comments
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Ok from down the street Mahmood with Batelco DSL.
Bonsaimark
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OK from my flat in Juffair…
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I tried 5 -6 times to follow your link to SILVEROO at around 3.55pm CET Friday – and could not open that page……..
Mike – Luxembourg
PS – yours is still fine!
My weekend starts now….. back Monday 🙂
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Works fine from Toronto!
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You had a routing problem yesterday, as one of the nodes on the way to your server was down (on Batelco’s US tier 1 ISP). This caused extreme slowness until the final IP for your server resolved and a more efficient route was established form the host machine. (of course it worked through a proxy/MTC/other countries as they use different transit uplinks)
You have been automatically rerouted today through the Japan uplink, down to above.net in the states. I have no idea why this problem was specific to your website, as I checked several Rackspace hosted servers and they were all fine.
Anyway, all is well now. I’ll look into it for you if it happens again, but you should be fine.
e.
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That’s a relief! Thanks very much for the explanation, now it makes sense. But you probably can understand my brief bout of panic with all the site closures happening left, right and centre!
Thanks again for your investigation.
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Thank you Tony, the comment below explains why the slowdown/unreachable problems were caused.
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now this is a very good idea that I will take up! thanks for suggesting it.
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Mike thanks for your reports. The link didn’t work because the proxy inserted /// before the ” and screwed up the link. I’ve fixed that and it should work now.
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There is something wrong. It can take ages for your page to load. I was going to report it
Tony
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A bit slow on the intial load but once your in all subsequent pages load a fast as usual.
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loads FINE from dubai
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Yesterday – Thursday 24th November – I had lots of trouble to open your blog – as in, it would not open at all….. but that “could” all be down to our system here undergoing a massage – that said – all my other traffic worked just fine.
Today – its back to normal and loads in a heartbeat.
I hope “they” leave you alone!
🙂
Mike – Luxembourg
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No problems from Bahrain today (Friday), although yesterday I did have problems with lots of sites using Batelco, not just yours, most of them from Europe.
Keep up the good work
G
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No problems from my side (MTC Vodafone line), Mahmood. Speed is also normal.
Guys, get a 3G connect card as a backup 😉
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I don’t know if you’ve heard, Mahmood, but the UAE has blocked Flickr. Some Flickr people have started a campaign to get it unblocked again: http://www.flickr.com/groups/uaeflickrblock/
Cheers
Ash the Elder/Wyrd
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I can tell you it loads pefectly here in London.
Khalid
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A-ok here in Qatar as well
=^..^=
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ok from bahrain
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–
Mahmood’s Den main page fully loads in 21 seconds from Toronto.
@ Computer Time: 2005-11-26 (05:23:20 am)
You have chosen the Eastern timezone 0
Coordinated Universal Time -5 hours; Not Daylight Saving Time.
http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/d/-5/java
.
Philadelphia U. S. A. – First American Wireless Broadband Satellite System to provide Internet Connections at lower prices than land line servers can provide.
Coming to a location near you soon. (WWSW)
It’ll take an Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a hydrogen bomb to jam these signals.
.
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only the coffe is filtered here on Hawar
Connon_the_Bahrainni
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Exactly the level of consistent stupidity we’ve come to expect from the MoI. Consider the move in the context of recent Bahraini politics – it couldn’t be going better for the government with the opposition having a series of self made disasters. First the opposition implodes over the Political Societies Law with mass walkout and then they make an absolute disaster out of their campaign against the Personal Status Law: their campaign demanded that only clerics have the authority to decide issues of women’s rights, while saying elected MPs have no authority to legislate -so where does this leave the 2002’s election boycott supposedly on the grounds that only elected MPs should have the power to legislate? Utterly discredited. Even worse for them it’s ended the political dichotomy that they had used to garner international support (and from the politically naive at home): that they were in favour of greater democracy and that the government was blocking their way. That’s over now.
Similarly, Khawaja and Nabeel Rajab have been busy scuttling the Centre’s claims to be an advocate of a liberal human rights agenda by lining up against the women’s activists’ campaign for a unified Personal Status Law – with the argument on the women’s rights issue that the interests of ‘religious communities’ should take precedence over the rights of individuals.
And so what’s the response of the MoI to the opposition coming out with its true agenda? What do you expect? Apparently block some villagers sites, which even in its own terms doesn’t work since the entirety of Bahrain knows that to get round the blocking only takes a milisecond. So the sole achievement of the move is to provide an immediate distraction from opposition’s disasters. Well done and deserved congratulations – you’ve got your reputation to uphold.
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Perhaps these sites were blocked so the MOI could put an electronic marker to see which computers with which IP addresses log on to the site and visit the site and blog info and comments so they can spy and trace and catch people.