Depositfiles still being filtered 2 months on.

So after more than 1.5 months there still hasn't been ANY progress on the issue with your IWF servers filtering depositfiles and other file hosting servers.

If Plusnet do not want to fix this problem, then please let me know what domains are filtered on the IWF server so that I and others know what services/servers I will not be allowed to use. Because sometimes websites look broken, when in fact it is you who are breaking them.

Any person with their head screwed on straight would not (and should not) try to download pictures of kiddie pr0n (if that is what IWF is looking for). And if someone did then log their IP address hand over the data to the police and hopefully they will arrest them and stick them in jail where THEY can be fiddled with by their 30 stone inmate.

I refuse to close my ticket until I get an answer. If you are not going to allow access to depositfiles and the like, all I ask for is that you say so. Not to hide behind "our network team is investigating the problem". That is just a cop out.

Nations have risen and fallen in less time than this "investigation" is taking.

It's interesting how your post has been "missed" by two PN Reps who have posted in another thread today.

Hi there,

I'm really sorry that you're still having problems with this.

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So after more than 1.5 months there still hasn't been ANY progress on the issue with your IWF servers filtering depositfiles and other file hosting servers.

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We've taken too long to fix this and you have my apologies for that. We have invested a *lot* of time into trying to track down the issue here though, it's not as cut and dry as you might initially think. Testing against some of the affected sites has returned no cause to believe that our proxies are at fault. Evidence would suggest they are, but it's proving a complete PITA to get to the bottom of.

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If Plusnet do not want to fix this problem, then please let me know what domains are filtered on the IWF server so that I and others know what services/servers I will not be allowed to use. Because sometimes websites look broken, when in fact it is you who are breaking them.

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We don't filter specific domains. The system works like this: The IWF provide a list of website addresses that are known to be hosting child abuse images. When you try and access a website our gateways check the IP address of the server you're accessing. If this IP address is where one of the URLs on the list is hosted, then your request is passed to the IWF proxies and the URL you're trying to access is checked. If the URL is on the IWF list then your request is blocked. If it's not then the content is served to you. That's how it should work and from what we can see, that's also what's happening.

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I refuse to close my ticket until I get an answer. If you are not going to allow access to depositfiles and the like, all I ask for is that you say so. Not to hide behind "our network team is investigating the problem". That is just a cop out.

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We're not hiding behind anything so I apologise if it has come across that way. The truth is that we need a decision making by the business about what to do with regards to this as we've pretty much run out of things we can do from a diagnostic standpoint

The guys who built the IWF platform have been out of the office of late which has slowed progress on this one. I'll see if I can get the ball rolling again this week though.

Kind Rgds,

Thank you for the reply, however I can't see what the problem is.

http://depositfiles.com/en/files/4155531
Click on the link and try and download the file. Of course make sure you are on the customer side of the filter.

Daily I have to investigate problems 10^6 times more complex than this, those being problems of an intermittent nature (happening extremely rarely under unlikely situations/combinations). This is a simple case, it fails EVERY time, I sure wish my problems were this easily repeatable.

<update!>
However, at this point in time I am able to download so I assume the IWF filters have either been switched off or you have fixed the problem. So please leave it alone <wink>.


Thanks again.

I managed to download it using a BE connection which is signed up to IWF . Only got 110 KB/s though

We've not made any changes AFAIK so not sure why the problem appears to have subsided. Having said that, I held a meeting with the business owners of this platform yesterday and we should be able to make some progress over the coming days.

To a certain degree the problem is with the architecture of the platform. We've two issues. The one that you're having with depositfiles and another which to cut a very long story short is to do with the way the proxy server we're using handles HTTP 1.1 requests.

As an interim measure, we are going to put a white list mechanism in place. This is far from ideal though and hopefully you can understand why we've been reluctant to do this before now. When our platform team have more bandwidth to accommodate another project we'll look at a longer term resolution to the problem.

Sorry it's taken so long to sort.

Kind Rgds,

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When our platform team have more bandwidth to accommodate another project ....

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Is that jabberwocky for when our technical team have more time?

(Asked good-humouredly ).

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We've not made any changes AFAIK so not sure why the problem appears to have subsided.

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I'd have to dispute that. It hasn't worked for over 1.5 months and now it is working...but maybe you are right.

However......please leave it alone and freeze it and if it stops working in future, do a diff on it<wink>

Quick update. We've just rolled out a fix for these problems. The changes might take a while to kick in but all should be rosy come this time tomorrow

Rgds,