Unable to ping 8.8.8.8 on Flip?

Forums › Vocus (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre and CallPlus) › Unable to ping 8.8.8.8 on Flip?

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yitz

1466 posts

Uber Geek

#1461192 4-Jan-2016 21:14

If I remember correctly, Roku would have been the reason ICMP echo pings were blocked, the media player insisted on having 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 unreachable before falling back to user acquired DHCP DNS servers, so blocking ping was a way to trick it into determining Google Public DNS was unreachable and fall back to user specified DNS server addresses (such as those of ISP's Global Mode and other smart DNS).

richms: So if your ISP sneakily redirects traffic its ok, but if someone else does it then its hacking and wrong? Ok. Good to know I should take flip off the list for ISPs to consider.

Oh come on now... how is this different to ISPs who redirect traffic into their transparent proxies and cache farms to improve customer experience? What about when many major ISPs blindly sent traffic from blogger and other google user generated content through the DIA filter for almost two and a half years?

richms

23395 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

#1461202 4-Jan-2016 21:40

yitz:
richms: So if your ISP sneakily redirects traffic its ok, but if someone else does it then its hacking and wrong? Ok. Good to know I should take flip off the list for ISPs to consider.
Oh come on now... how is this different to ISPs who redirect traffic into their transparent proxies and cache farms to improve customer experience? What about when many major ISPs blindly sent traffic from blogger and other google user generated content through the DIA filter for almost two and a half years?

The transparent proxy problem is well known about and you can opt out on some ISPs from it.

No idea on the other one, doesnt seem to have affected me.

Richard rich.ms

noroad

599 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1461253 4-Jan-2016 23:36

Greendrake:
So if the OP's got all that turned off, what's the issue?

My understanding is that, as noroad said:
These addresses are redirected to load balanced local DNS clusters. this was done for many reasons including safe mode, global mode

which happens to all Flip customers regardless of what they have turned off.

Yes, the actual question from the OP was why can't I ping 8.8.8.8 etc, well the technical answer is that these addresses are virtual IP's on the load balancers and I only setup the UDP/53 for these IP's. I suppose I could spend some time and redirect the "ICMP Echo reply" to a valid target as well if people think there is value in it.

This feature was originally added for Roku/Global mode and also safe mode to start with but when it also fixed issues with people using generic DNS servers as well it was rolled out across the board and we are very happy with it. Same reason why CGNAT will stay, not just to conserve IPv4 addresses but for 99.99% of people they can't tell any difference and they no longer have to worry about their router being hacked and used as a DDOS relay. Flip has always been upfront about being setup to be as simple, reliable and cheap as possible for the average home user, it was never designed to be the answer for everyone. If you are a purist and the thought of public DNS being redirected locally to stop issues for the average user is not your cup of tea then M2group (Flip, Callplus, Slingshot, Orcon, 2Talk) has other brands with slightly varying network setups to suit each user (I.e. use Orcon with a Static IP and run your own resolver, just make sure you know what you are doing).

PS, there is no transparent caching of Flip users.

Greendrake

61 posts

Master Geek

#1461865 5-Jan-2016 18:40

Thank you noroad, great to see the bottom of it.

Yes it does feel "sneakily" (as richms pointed) that Flip effectively intercepts my communication with 8.8.8.8 and responds on its behalf. Say if I am testing how global DNS servers respond to certain queries and need to see responses from Google not Flip — the only option is to SSH/VPN somewhere and test from there. Perhaps acceptable as a tradeoff for reasonable price and no contracts.

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