Entanet and Geolocation?

I'm getting quite sick of sites redirecting me to 'localised' versions of themselves that are often slower to be updated.

The only alternative there seems to be is using a proxy, which will just slow everything down 90% of the time when I'm not using such sites.

Some UK ISPs that use transparent proxies and webcaches seem to avoid this (AOL UK for instance, my parents ISP, always brings up the global version of the sites I'm visiting)

Is there any way to block sites from tracing my location from my IP address?

This isn't Entanet's fault, and in my case I often find the localised webpage to be much faster than the global page due to the servers often being hosted in the UK. A lot of international webpages do this these days.

Please do not encourage the use of transparent cache servers or proxies, as it completely ruins the purpose of the internet and gives users a false sense of speed and means that the ISP can get sloppy with their network.

In fact, the very reason I chose Entanet is because they do not run such servers. If they ever did, I'd leave right away.

Even if we were to put a transparent proxy (which we really don't want to do but might need to do for CAI blocking*) it would still give you a uk site as all our IP addresses are link to the uk... (even the ones currently in use in Amsterdam or Frankfurt)

* Government have asked all ISPs to provide CAI blocking by the end of 2007 voluentarily, if they don't get the response rate as high as they would like then it'll become manditory.

J

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http://www.despres.co.uk/
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Chief Operations Officer
Entanet - http://www.enta.net/
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Could I ask what CAI blocking is?

CAI = Child Abuse Images

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmbills/067/06067.i-i.html and http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2006-05-15b.67167.h

J

--
http://www.despres.co.uk/
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Chief Operations Officer
Entanet - http://www.enta.net/
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Edited by boggits (Thu 21-Sep-06 17:59:25)

Dont get me wrong, I'm against Transparent Proxies generally, I was just amused to finally find a 'use' for them! I also realise this is in no way Entas fault.

I'm also even more against Geolocation in general tho, It turns the 'World Wide Web' into the 'Local Web' and most of the applications for it seem to be about segmenting the world for marketing and advertising purposes. If I want a site to know my location I will tell it. This is compounded by the fact that while, say, German users would be able to select between the .de local site and the .com global site of a particular company, there seem to be more and more cases where a British user is automatically redirected to the .co.uk site, as British users dont tend to differentiate between the two as much, the language being the same.

Anyway, is there no way to have an IP that it not linked to any location or anything like that?

As for the CAI debate, it seems pointless to me. I dont see why the Govt should feel it has the right to start vetting my internet connection when the 'blocking' isnt going to stop anything from happening anyway, as no blacklist can be complete, and all blacklists can be defeated by foreign proxies. It will also be very hard to filter select files on P2P networks without blocking the entire network. This will therefore cause hassle and annoyance for no benefit. Dont get me wrong, I am of the opinion that the people looking for these images should be castrated, without any form of anesthetic, but I dont see this doing that.

Edited by darkstar251 (Fri 22-Sep-06 07:41:26)

Interesting article Here

I'm 100% against disgusting material such as child pornography, but the government has no right to censor the internet. They claim it would only be against child pornography, but how long will it be unti lthey start filtering more sites that they deem to "incite racial hatred" and the like, all under the command of one unaccountable minister. What if they start blocking sites like thepiratebay.org and bittorrent, under the grounds that it "infringes on copyrights"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet

J

--
http://www.despres.co.uk/
--
Chief Operations Officer
Entanet - http://www.enta.net/
--