VLC media player website blocked on many ISPs in India

[Chip]

Works with Airtel fibre but not with TPBB as of now. TPBB shows a connection reset now and last night I saw the DOT block notice. So yes, the Govt has issued instructions to block this site. Some have complied and some haven't. It's only a matter of time. I really wonder why this utility site has been blocked. It has no pirated content! Or is it being blocked because this utility can be used to view videos. That's so daft.

 

[ishanjain28]

Sorry, I stand corrected.

This is dumb shit airtel blocking www.videolan.org for no f reason.

videolan.org is unblocked and they don't mess with DNS responses of this domain but videolan.org redirects to www.videolan.org.

Airtel uses two DNS addresses for their LTE customers. 202.56.215.41 and 117.96.122.72.

They are modifying DNS responses for www.videolan.org to

emerald :: ~ » dig @202.56.215.41 www.videolan.org

; <<>> DiG 9.18.1 <<>> @202.56.215.41 www.videolan.org
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 56644
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.videolan.org.        IN    A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.videolan.org.    300    IN    CNAME    dotblocking.dummy.
dotblocking.dummy.    3600    IN    A    13.127.247.216

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
rpz.airtelblack.com.    300    IN    SOA    rpz.airtelblack.com. hostmaster.rpz.airtelblack.com. 6932 3 3 2419200 604800

;; Query time: 90 msec
;; SERVER: 202.56.215.41#53(202.56.215.41) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Wed Apr 06 09:19:25 IST 2022
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 158

13.127.247.216 is some machine on AWS and probably controlled by Airtel and it doesn't respond to icmp/http or anything else.

Jio uses the DNS server, 49.45.0.1 for the LTE customers and they are responding with, 49.44.79.236 to www.videolan.org

So, To fix this problem, Just change your DNS servers and it should work fine after that.

 

[brambedkar59]

@ishanjain28 Changing DNS does nothing on Excitel. I tried with Cloudflare, Adguard & Quad9.

Edit: Works fine on Airtel 4G with Adguard DNS. Without private DNS it gets blocked.

 

[Jonas]

What's illegal about this app though?

 

[Navjot Singh]

It allows you to watch illegally downloaded videos. It only makes sense.

 

[ishanjain28]

Changing DNS does nothing on Excitel. I tried with Cloudflare, Adguard & Quad9.

What error do you see when you try to access www.videolan.org? Airtel has started intercepting http traffic to videolan.org to show the DoT message.
I suspect excitel is now blocking based on SNI.
swear to god ECH needs to be a real thing as soon as possible.

 

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[brambedkar59]

@ishanjain28 I am getting "ERR_CONNECTION_RESET" on Excitel.

 

[igloo]

working on jio 4g with cloud flare pvt dns
without - no.

 

[jelegend]

Works perfectly fine on JIO Fiber and Airtel 4G for me

 

[ishanjain28]

@ishanjain28 I am getting "ERR_CONNECTION_RESET" on Excitel.

Yeah, they are most definitely blocking based on SNI then. You'll have to use VPN, socks proxies or goodbye DPI to workaround this.