The Doom Depot, not available in Australia?

I recently discovered to my dismay that the Doom Depot no longer existed and that Doom2.net was no longer around. After some googling I found out that a lot of people could still access these two web sites. Every time I tried to go to either doom2.net or doomdepot.doom2.net the hostname would not resolve.

I managed to access the two sites by going through an internet proxy website and loading the pages through them but they are of course very slow.

I have tried different computers, my iphone (using the 3g network) and friends machines all to no avail. It would seem there is some kind of DNS issue with Australia and doom2.net.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I could try? Do I need to add doom2.net to my hostfile?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=australia+internet+filter&btnG=Google+Search&aq=6&oq=australia+in

This has nothing to do with Australia filtering content and has been affecting me (in South America) for a long time. The server Doom2.net is on blocks many IPs belonging to ISPs outside The USA and Europe. You'll have to use a proxy to access it. You can probably see this.

For some reason mass-blocking is becoming much more common nowadays. For example, I can't access the forums on John Romero's site anymore without a proxy.

It isn't the net filter... yet. Our supposedly pregressive government has suddenly turned ultra conservative on us. I cant vote for either party next election as they are essentially the same now :(

I wonder why it isnt working in SA and Australia?

I think it's because the Doom2.net site is hosted on a server that belongs to some commercial company or private enterprise which for security reasons or whatever applies filters.

I think most of it can be put down to sloppy/lazy administration. IIRC - you only need 4 IP address ranges to block almost all of Asia - with Australia and New Zealand being wiped out in the process as (presumably) unintentional collateral damage. While that eliminates a major source of spam and hack-attacks it also inconveniences legitimate users - they may be few in number but that's still no excuse for heavy-handed block filtering. From my perspective - Doom2.net and it's hosted sites appeared to drop off the radar late in 2006 and I must say I've hardly missed them.

GreyGhost said:
I think most of it can be put down to sloppy/lazy administration.

I think most of your post can be put down to sloppy reading comprehension or a lack of understanding.

The host gains nothing from having Doom2.net on it, and Doom2.net has no say as to the restrictions applied on the server.

I have no problem and I also come From The Land Down Under

Whats your ISP hawkwind? I'm on Bigpond (I know, I know....) and am unable to access the site

Reeds

myk said:

I think most of your post can be put down to sloppy reading comprehension or a lack of understanding.

The host gains nothing from having Doom2.net on it, and Doom2.net has no say as to the restrictions applied on the server.

It's strange that I can access http://destructivecults.com/ which shares it's IP address with Doom2.net and is most likely on the same server.

I think we're in agreement that Doom2.net cannot override IP blocking filters set at the server level, though a lot of hosting plans (mine included) allow supplementary filters to be set at the domain level and I suspect that's what we're up against.

I'm with Iprimus.

Thats really stange.

Thanks everyone for the replies though. It's been quite enlightening.

Cheers

If it is a block in place at the server, the host name should at least still resolve.

Have you tried doing a traceroute?

I have yes, it wont resolve at all :(

Heh. The only thing I can't get to like this is the front page, I think.

Well, earlier today I sent an email to Bahdko to see if she can do something about it.

myk said:

Heh. The only thing I can't get to like this is the front page, I think.

Well, earlier today I sent an email to Bahdko to see if she can do something about it.

I appreciate that Myk, thankyou.

Enclave said:

I have yes, it wont resolve at all :(

Then it sounds like there is some kind of issue with Australian DNS servers. Have you tried finding a public DNS server and changing your DNS settings?

It doesn't resolve for me either, actually.

Wouldn't using a public DNS service slow down DNS related connections according to the distance to the DNS server? I can't find any public DNS servers in the area.

But if this affects South America and Australia, the problem must be closer to Doom2.net itself. This issue has been a very long term thing, anyhow. It's been affecting me for years.

PS: Bahdko hasn't said anything, yet, at least.

I reconfigured my router to use OpenDNS who are based in California. DNS requests take a bit longer to process - it's a 216ms hop compared to 30ms for my ISP's DNS server - but for the first time in a long time I'm looking at Doom2.net's home page without using a proxy.

Maybe the problem is something Bahdko does so we pay her to solve the issue :p

The name server for Doom2.net is on soarwitheagles.net, which is not accessible directly from here either.

I still find it strange that the hosted sites are accessible through the other domain. What is that, an HTTP bug?

It might be an Apache configuration issue. I wonder if the addition of destructivecults.com or changes made to it in mid-2006 has something to do with the problem? Have we been having problems for that long?
Maybe we have - a search of the Internet Archive suggests that people have been able to take short-cuts through that site since June 2006.

I think this can be traced to shitty host address supplier.
I used to have DirectNic for my host. But over a year back it started to act fucked up for everyone in Sweden. Not resolving. You could headbut your way through it by just hitting reload repeatedly. But at the same time I were told by Manc that he had no issues at all with accessing it.

Either way. I am no longer on directnic and the issues are now no more.

Yeah, I'm suspicious of the name server, since Bahdko seems to provide it herself, though there's also the shared IPs.

I know the problem has been present for a very long time... mid 2006 could be about right. I made some older posts about the issue on the COMPET-N forums, and unless some of those are older than mid 2006, that's probably when the issue started.

The finding that destructivecults.com works may have been accidental, as I found it because my browser sent me there when I used the IP along with a hosted site. The proxy seems to be able to do the same, so even people without connection problems to the site may have gotten those addresses.

PS: Cool, with the destructivecults.com address I can even enter the FTP section to update my site. It feels a bit weird to use someone else's domain like that, though.

The name server's definitely a suspect. If for some reason it's not responding to requests from DNS servers that'd probably flag a 404 error - I should have thought of that earlier. The shared IP's not an issue, they're common practice on shared servers and it's an arrangement that usually works well, though something's gone a little awry in this case.

I went to try to re-download Doom 64 TC, and I've been trying for a couple months now, and I can't seem to access the Doom Depot website to get at it + the extra levels and such. Is the site down completely?

Internet explorer could not display page. Heh, looks like it's dead at least for now. You can get the Doom 64 absolution TC elsewhere, just google it.

I swear there was just a topic about this...like, not even a month ago.

But maybe that's just me.

I also had a deja-vu moment though this time around the anonymous proxies are also failing.
A nameserver trace through (the previously reliable) OpenDNS produced this response-

Nameserver trace for doom2.net:

* Looking for who is responsible for root zone and followed k.root-servers.net.
* Looking for who is responsible for net and followed f.gtld-servers.net.
* Looking for who is responsible for doom2.net and followed ns2.soarwitheagles.net.

Nameservers for doom2.net:

* ns1.soarwitheagles.net returned (SERVFAIL)
* ns2.soarwitheagles.net returned (SERVFAIL)

Looks like the nameservers are down - for how long is anyone's guess.

i was looking for some compet-n demos about 2 weeks ago and doom2.net was already down by then. maybe someone could get info from bahdko what's going on with the site.

You can access doom depot using the server's ip
http://195.197.184.88/~doomdepot/
Thanks to myk for the IP