Connecting to Undernet in India is easy... not.

It appears that Undernet is blocked across a whole bunch of networks in India for reasons unknown. Here's my traceroute to us.undernet.org:

~$ traceroute us.undernet.org
traceroute: Warning: us.undernet.org has multiple addresses; using 66.186.59.50
traceroute to us.undernet.org (66.186.59.50), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.227 ms 0.858 ms 0.875 ms
2 ABTS-KK-Dynamic-001.64.167.122.airtelbroadband.in (122.167.64.1) 39.120 ms 26.279 ms *
3 ABTS-KK-Static-041.32.166.122.airtelbroadband.in (122.166.32.41) 47.611 ms 25.424 ms 25.164 ms
4 ABTS-KK-Static-009.32.166.122.airtelbroadband.in (122.166.32.9) 25.713 ms 25.913 ms 24.841 ms
5 122.175.255.29 (122.175.255.29) 26.253 ms 25.515 ms 25.598 ms
6 * * *
7 * * *


There is just one server accessible, and that's montreal.qc.ca.undernet.org. Hopefully, this should save you a half hour's googling.

Don't let this stop you from filing a complaint with your ISP though (I just logged one with Airtel - ticket #18088886 - and they've promised to have this sorted by 1:30 pm tomorrow) - this is still a free country and they have no business blocking anything on the internetworks.

Update 2009-03-24:
Oslo.NO.EU.Undernet.Org also seems to work. Still no response from Airtel, however. That's quite atypical - it's the first time in about three years that Airtel has failed their "we'll fix it in four business hours" promise.

Update 2009-03-27:

Date: 25/3/09 1:24 AM
Hi,

I was to be informed about the status issue 18088886 regarding blocking of Undernet IRC servers by Airtel latest by 13:30 on 24th March, but have not been contacted. Please get back to me with an update.

Thanks,
Sidu.

Date: 25/3/09 1:32 PM

Dear Mr.Sidu,

Thank you for writing to us at Airtel Telemedia Services.

We acknowledge the receipt of your mail dated March 25th, 2009.

With regards to reference number 18088886, we regret to inform you that IRC
port 66602 cannot be opened as the same has
been blocked by Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

For further assistance, please.
• Call us at 080-44444121
• E-Mail us at - care.karnataka@airtel.in
• Fax us at 080-41112346

Assuring you of our best of services at all times.
Yours sincerely,

Thrapthi
Customer Relations
Airtel Telemedia Services

Date: 25/3/09 3:08 PM
Hi,

The highest port possible is 65535. Port number 66602 does not exist. Please confirm your response.

Please keep in mind that I am able to connect to other IRC networks (like Freenode) on the standard IRC ports, which would not be possible if the ports themselves were blocked by the DoT.

Best,
Sidu.

Date: 26/3/09 9:15 AM

Dear Mr. Sidu,

Thank you for writing to us at Airtel Telemedia Services.

We acknowledge the receipt of your mail dated March 25th, 2009.

Your request for broadband related has already been registered with the
reference number
18088886 and we have forwarded your mail to our technical team for further
clarifications.

We would get back to you as per the updates.

For further assistance, please.
• Call us at 080-44444121
• E-Mail us at - care.karnataka@airtel.in
• Fax us at 080-41112346

Assuring you of our best of services at all times.
Yours sincerely,

Mohsin.
Customer Relations
Airtel Telemedia Services

5 comments:

Ravi said...

Please update the blog with the result of your complaint.

It will be good to know if airtel actually fixes this or gives you the runaround.

Unknown said...

Nothing yet. This is the first time in about three years that Airtel has broken the four business hours issue resolution that they promise.

Noufal said...

One of the servers that eu.undernet.org delegates to accessible as well. I guess that it's the OSLO one which you've noted.

smoothoperator said...

They did the same thing in Aug/Sep 2008 and after repeated complaints they admitted that TRAI had asked them to block access to undernet. And it looks like they have started it all over again. Only this time none of the hidden servers seem to work either - montreal, oslo, ede, vancouver... nothing.

niku said...

Montreal server did work. Thanks. (us.undernet.org, eu.undernet.org and some 4-5 other particular eu servers I tried from BSNL's dataone are not working.)