--- Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 17:27:23 -0600 To: declan@private From: [deleted] Subject: ChinaNet blocking American academic access Hi Declan, I've not been able to peruse all recent Politech messages, so I may have missed this. If it hasn't made the list, though, I think it's intriguing and vitally important. I've attached a general announcement, sent today, from the IT staff of the major university where I work. I've anonymized it as best I can; please do the same for my particulars. (If you want the original message for journalistic verification, complete with PGP signature, I'd be happy to forward it to you.) Thanks! . . . . . . . . . . Several weeks ago, it was brought to the attention of Telecommunications and Network Services that many web sites and networks within China were inaccessible from the ___________ University network. Investigations into this matter revealed that the ChinaNet network administrators had begun to block all IP traffic to and from the registered DNS (Domain Name Service) servers for ___________'s network, as well as the DNS servers for numerous other US universities and institutions. This made it impossible for users on our network to perform DNS lookups for any hosts on the Chinese network. Users experiencing this problem were requested to send email to china-dns@private to receive instructions on how to temporarily work around the issue by reconfiguring their machines to query XXX.XXX.XXX.XX for DNS information. At this time, IT believes that a more effective long-term solution has been implemented, and use of this temporary DNS server should no longer be necessary. IT will cease offering DNS services from XXX.XXX.XXX.XX on Friday, November 21, 2003. Users should return their computers to their previous configurations for DNS servers before this date to avoid any interruption of service. If you need assistance with this reconfiguration, please contact your technical support representative or the Information Center at XXX-XXX-XXXX. Please note that ChinaNet appears to have taken this action as part of a content blocking policy. IT cannot guarantee that the ChinaNet administrators will not make another attempt to block traffic from our network in the future. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Nov 17 2003 - 06:56:11 PST