Sky Broadband help – its blocking a specific website

Firstly (lets get this out there) it’s not ‘specialist’ porn!!

My wife runs her own HR consultancy, for this she has a relatively simple website.
This website is absolutely accessible from all other systems, 3G, 4G, work internet, friends internet, Wifi hotspots, the works.
Only we can’t get onto it at home – Sky appears to have blocked it, but without any reason we can find. There is no ‘wall’, sky shield hasn’t been activated (no kids old enough to understand what an internet is) so I’m completely clueless as to why it’s blocked.
The issue is, so is sky. Does anyone have any pointers?

what error do you see?

Do you know anyone else with Sky to see if the same thing happens with them?

Post the link up and let others try. It may not be a Sky issue per se; it may be your wi-fi setup. If other people are having the same problem it might give you some leads.

Is the website run from a home server?

Some routers can’t handle a request that is routed out to the world and back to itself.

Post link.

Is it hosted in the home, on an external service or with your ISP?

First guess would be some kind of DNS muck up so when you’re at home your IP Address doesn’t register to the website properly.

Not common with domestic connections, do you know if you have a static or dynamic IP address?

Ask sky. It is possible if it is a small site then it has never been categorised by sites such as opendns and for that reason may be being blocked, not because it is in a dodgy category. Only they would know though.

Similarly you might be using the opendns family dns settings on your router and that is blocking it

Can’t get to my home site (hosted on home server) from the internal network without playing some tricks.

There’s nothing much on it yet, so i can’t be bothered to fix it.

I did find that Sky were very keen to block all sorts of sites. Noticed this as progressively more of the movie streaming sites went on their block list last year. Not entirely surprising as Sky are ultimately a content, more than platform, supplier.

Yes, I know that doesn’t explain why this particular site was blocked, but it suggests that they actively seek stuff to block. Her site got on their list by mistake I’d guess.

I left Sky because of it.

I have issues, ok some of those too.

I have issues with WFH via a Sky router. I have to uncheck my symantic endpoint protection on the laptop, uncheck the Network Threat Protection, then it’s fine.

May help, may not.

Sky use a DNS farming product to help with their filtering, it’s possible the domain was used previously and it got blacklisted.

Post a link and we’ll see, I can also run it through my companies DB to see if our web site autoclassifier has seen the site before and how it was categorised.

I’m on Sky and can test it to see if it’s more than just your connection.

If they are blocking it, a) get on to them to whitelist it and b) use TOR in the meantime which gets round all their net-nannying very effectively.

I have issues with WFH via a Sky router. I have to uncheck my symantic endpoint protection on the laptop, uncheck the Network Threat Protection, then it’s fine.

That’s nothing to do with Sky and everything to do with Norton.

Ahh well, thought it might help.

Firstly (lets get this out there) it’s not ‘specialist’ porn!!

Just normal porn then – excellent. 8)

Thanks for the response, just got in and will be back trying as soon as I’ve got microbits to bed. The website is
Keystonehr.co.uk
Oddly on my iPhone it just cuts out the wifi and connects via 3G, but that’s via a EE booster box that’s plugged into the same router.
If I try to connect on the Mac, no error it just doesn’t connect and I get ‘server where page is located isn’t responding

I assume you’ve tried that with a www. in front of it too?

And have you tried using the google public DNS servers?

I’m on sky. It works ok for me

I’m on sky – works fine for me.

What router are you using – this one?
http://www.trustedreviews.com/sky-hub-2013-review

Yep, that’s the router.
It’s been working fine for the last 6 months or so. Apparently it broadband was slow yesterday so the router was turned off and back on, now it won’t access the website on the Mac, either iPhone ir iPads. It’s defiantly a router thing, or our specific connection as it works everywhere else.

Fine here too.

When it doesn’t work, what do you see instead?

If I try to connect on the Mac, no error it just doesn’t connect and I get ‘server where page is located isn’t responding

Looks like a DNS issue to me – hence the suggestion of using the google DNS servers.

From Plusnet. Draytek 2830n router, ADSL.
Can ping ok.
Page loads ok via Http on latest Firefox
Firefox complains of invalid cert via Https:

“www.keystonehr.co.uk uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.uk-noc.com, uk-noc.com (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)”

We had problems with specific sites with our sky sr102 router – to do with DNS (how the router converts a www. addr into an ip addr).

Sky try to lock down the DNS settins so you cant change them directly.

Thanks to someone called thisisG over on the skyhelp forum I did this to change the router to use the google’s dns:

Log in to the router

Go to “Maintanance” -> “Backup Settings”

Under “Save a Copy of Current Settings” click “Backup” and save the file to a know place.

Open the file in any sensible text editor (vim, Sublime, Notepad++, etc…)

Look for the line containing:

<DNSServers>90.207.238.97,90.207.238.99</DNSServers>

Change the IPs to your DNS of choice

Go back to the router page under “Maintanance” -> “Backup Settings”

Under “Restore Saved Settings from a File” click “Choose File” and find the config file you just edited

Smack “Restore”

Wait for router to reboot

Hey presto! You changed the DNS servers for the router. 🙂

I take no responsibility if you break something. Please only do this if you are confident in your own technical abilities. This may or may not void your warranty.

Note the most common google dns servers are at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

Caveats: I am not a doctor. Take a proper backup. You should not trust me etc etc.

Sadly that’s not worked as I can’t find the DNS line – got the file open in notepad++ but no joy.
Just to add, also can’t open from my works window 10 laptop.
Would a new router work? I don’t mind going shopping if it will.

Can you ping it?
(open “Command Prompt” -Windows 7- and type “ping Keystonehr.co.uk”.

Success will look like:
C:\Users\Chris Bennett>ping Keystonehr.co.uk

Pinging Keystonehr.co.uk [46.29.93.155] with 32 bytes o
Reply from 46.29.93.155: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=55
Reply from 46.29.93.155: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=55
Reply from 46.29.93.155: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=55
Reply from 46.29.93.155: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 46.29.93.155:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 30ms, Maximum = 33ms, Average = 30ms

Sky used to lock down their routers, that is, “hide” the ADSL password. It was hackable with some Google Fu but the upshot was, for most people, you had to use the Sky supplied router.

If you tried to replace it with a third party router it wouldn’t work.

This was many years ago, tho.

In notepad can you find the string:
<DNSServers>

?

Also check that the file is in plain text (well XML stuff) and should start with something like:
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<DslCpeConfig version=”3.0″>
<InternetGatewayDevice>

Masher – No, DNS is not in it at all. I suspect it’s been buried due to ease of hacking!

… If you have no luck with the router config hack “<DNSDerver>” etc, you should be able to set alternative DNS servers for the devices (laptop, PC) that need to connect.

mmmm.

Could you email the file to me? I’ll have a look.

#Edit – or as baron says you can override by each device but you shouldnt have to do that really.

Baron – no, request timed out

add as a trusted site?

I’ll look at it by device, but can’t change tablets, phones etc. It’s an absolute arse as it’s been working perfectly for ages!

If I can mail it over, that’d be great, what’s your address?

mark dot z dot asher at googlemail.com

You shouldn’t be changing the DNS on a Sky router with hackery, and you can’t (trivially) replace it with a different one. If you want to try a different DNS server, change it on your PC’s network adapter.

Can you ping the address and the IP (see the Baron’s post)?

Also try “tracert Keystonehr.co.uk” from the command prompt in same way as the ping above.

should show all hops from your PC to the other site.

ps site works fine on virgin media here.

Well, to add to the weirdness, i have access to an XP machine connected on sky adsl. I explicitly set the dns server to the sky primary dns server: 90.207.238.97 and then ping Keystonehr.co.uk – it resolves OK.

Banging Keystonehr.co.uk into the Firefox (on the remote sky adsl machine) brings up the page ok.

I was connected via vpn so dont know if this affects it