IPFS Blocked in Belgium

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1

The IP address of ipfs.io is blocked in Belgium.

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I think it’s because of the block on piracy websites in Belgium but I may be mistaken.

I couldn’t find any news articles about this or this being posted on the forum before so it must not be very well known. Any opinions on this? I myself am pretty disturbed to find this out.

2

I tried pinging it and I got the following IP addresses (they are both STOP pages from my ISP)
http://213.224.83.39/
http://[2a02:1800:100:6::404:1]/

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3

Can you of someone in Belgium figure out what kind of blocking this is. Because it looks like DNS?

Does ipfs work to access the website (http://127.0.0.1:8080/ipns/ipfs.io) ?

Traceroute, dig outputs would help.

4

I’m guessing it’s DNS-based blocking, so probably avoidable by using different DNS servers. From some searching around, Telenet messes with DNS requests for other sites too.

If I dig one of Telenet’s DNS servers for ipfs.io, I get the IP for the “StopPage”.

% dig @81.83.28.206 ipfs.io 

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> @81.83.28.206 ipfs.io
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 21034
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ipfs.io.			IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
ipfs.io.		3600	IN	A	213.224.83.39

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
io.			172697	IN	NS	c0.nic.io.
io.			172697	IN	NS	a0.nic.io.
io.			172697	IN	NS	a2.nic.io.
io.			172697	IN	NS	b0.nic.io.

But if I query a normal DNS server, I get a correct answer.

% dig @1.1.1.1 ipfs.io     

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> @1.1.1.1 ipfs.io
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 40549
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1452
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ipfs.io.			IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
ipfs.io.		15	IN	A	209.94.90.1

I’m not sure if the list of blocked websites is government-maintained or specific to each ISP. But Telenet does have some contact options for complaints or technical questions.

edit: apparently, DNS blocking is a widespread issue in Belgium. The list of blocked sites isn’t publicly available, the process to remove a site from the blocklist seems unclear, and some of the government sites related to this blocking appear to be unmaintained or abandoned entirely.