Is Comcast blocking conservative URLs?

05/22/2006 | Lee DeForest

[leedef]

My internet connection is via Comcast Cable. For the last few weeks I have not been able to connect to many political websites... namely "www.powerlineblog.com", "www.captainsquartersblog.com", "www.hughhewitt.com" and "www.biglizards.net" (and some others). Be it known that almost any other wiebsite is reachable.

I know the problem does not lie in my computer or with the sites themselves. If I take my laptop (which cannot get to these websites from home) to a Panera, Starbucks or my office, it can connect to them just fine.

Bottom line... IS COMCAST FILTERING OUT THESE URLs?

[Spktyr]

Change your DNS server settings. I doubt it's intentional, but Comcast's DNS servers normally suck that bad anyway.

I'm on Comcast as well and have had no problems since I changed DNS servers.

[Dustbunny]

Possibly. We have a LAN and frequently have problems linking to Conservative sites.

[xjcsa]

Wow - another new arrival from the future! I for one welcome our new time-traveling overlords.

[NonLinear]

Agree.

Had same DNS problem with Charter cable internet.
They denied a problem until we showed them side-by-side that other DNS could find all the sites that theirs were missing.

[JRios1968]

I have Comcast, and I live in the Bay Area. All those websites get in very nicely. Try again.

I'll be watching you...

[octobersky]

Try power cycling your router.

[KoRn]

Open a command prompt and ping powerlineblog.com and see if you get an address back. That will rule out DNS.

[jdm]

Yeah, this is almost certainly a troll.

First post is about blocked access to CONSERVATIVE sites?

LOL.

[JRios1968]

The kitties are watching...

[JRios1968]

And no replies from Leedef since posting a n00b vanity...

[JRios1968]

I think we have a positive lock on the troll's ID...I just received the following email (since it isn't FReepmail, it should be ok, I think...) -------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 00:12:34 -0500 From: "Stop Dumb" Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by gmail.com. To: ***@yahoo.com Subject: Your post of free republic " The kitties are watching..." If you had bothered to read the 1st sentence you would have found the poster provied a list of url's he was having trouble with, not once did the user say all conservative sites were being blocked. This jumping to conclusions makes freepers look rather worried. Why is that? " My internet connection is via Comcast Cable. For the last few weeks I have not been able to connect to many political websites... namely "www.powerlineblog.com", "www.captainsquartersblog.com", "www.hughhewitt.com" and "www.biglizards.net" (and some others). Be it known that almost any other wiebsite is reachable. I know the problem does not lie in my computer or with the sites themselves. If I take my laptop (which cannot get to these websites from home) to a Panera, Starbucks or my office, it can connect to them just fine. Bottom line... IS COMCAST FILTERING OUT THESE URLs?" --------------------- Any opinions?

[ThePythonicCow]

Being able to ping a site, such as powerlineblog.com, by name doesn't rule out DNS. It just rules out DNS being completely broken. It is still possible that DNS is partially broken, not providing network addresses for some sites.

[ThePythonicCow]

Never mind my ping comment - I had not read enough of this thread before posting. If getting to powerlineblog.com is the problem being investigated, then being able to ping it does rule out DNS as a reason for not being able to browse it.

[leedef]

I tried to ping "powerlineblog.com"... no luck. Please fill me in on how to change my Comcast DNS.

Leedef

[leedef]

Powered down and restarted the Comcast cable modem and the D-Link router... still no connection to various the conservative websites ("www.powerlineblog.com", "www.captainsquartersblog.com", "www.hughhewitt.com" and "www.biglizards.net")... most all other websites work fine!

Original question is still unanswered... IS COMCAST FILTERING OUT THESE URLs?

[pommi]

Forget recycling modem, touter, PC, your fridge .... the problem is with Comcast's DNS servers. I've struggled for weeks to get DNS issues resolved. Now I've configured my router to 4.2.2.2, a public DNS server. All is fine now.

[Thomas Truxtun]

I have had the same problem. I power recycle both the modem and the router and them I can read Captain Ed again. This is not a problem restricted to Firefox, Mozilla, Opera or the dreaded MSIE. It also happens on Linux browsers. Recycling fixes the problem.