81–90 of 169 posts
If a ping to a specific IP times out, I wouldn't say the IP is blocked. It could be that ICMP specifically is blocked, following some network rules on the firewall. This is pretty common in entreprise networks to not allow endpoint discovery. I could be missing something and happy to be corrected here, but I was surprised to read that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been the unfortunate one who paid and endured the slow-barely-usable/mostly unusable speeds. However, that was before the Starlink era. So if you’re gonna pay for WiFi, it’s worth checking if the flight is equipped with Starlink.
Yeah, I just flew WestJet from Canada to Honolulu and was amazed; full 1080p YouTube with no hiccups and I was able to play some (non-latency sensitive) online games, all over the Pacific. This was fully intentional; there wasn't any back-of-the-seat iPad for watching movies or anything, they straight up tell you to use your own device and watch Netflix. I did some research after and found a lot of airlines in NA are…
Westjet has required you to use your own device for a long time now (10 years?), but they offer an app/website and streaming library that works for anyone who connects to the in-plane wifi, unrelated to actual access to the internet.
Interesting that they're telling you to use your own streaming app/account now. Did you still have to pay extra for internet access? Was the Westjet streaming app still available?
If a ping to a specific IP times out, I wouldn't say the IP is blocked. It could be that ICMP specifically is blocked, following some network rules on the firewall. This is pretty common in entreprise networks to not allow endpoint discovery. I could be missing something and happy to be corrected here, but I was surprised to read that.
I’ve had to explain this over and over throughout my career. The only way to know if something is accessible is to try the exact endpoint and protocol. Even application-aware firewalls will mess with things at times.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a SRE and encountered this recently. To prevent DDoS, there is a buffer setting on the kernel that will limit the number of pings (a few settings actually). So if you have a group of machines that all ping a single destination at once, it's very possible to have some that fail to get a reply.
Oh, that's nasty. How long did it take you to troubleshoot that?
If a ping to a specific IP times out, I wouldn't say the IP is blocked. It could be that ICMP specifically is blocked, following some network rules on the firewall. This is pretty common in entreprise networks to not allow endpoint discovery. I could be missing something and happy to be corrected here, but I was surprised to read that.
In my old company it was the oposite. Ping worked allways, even when you where blocked on to a specific VLAN.
Edit: I wonder if any "enterprise" firewalls do ICMP echo proxying. Having the firewall replace the payload would remove some of the tunneling capability (thought I assume you could still finagle a side channel by just timing the packets) but would also eliminate some of the utility (since being able to craft the payload provides a way to test for specific bit patterns in packets causing problems).
I feel like you have to be brave messing with a plane's network. People tend to get really touchy when airplanes are involved.
People do get nervous, and in theory you could probably break some kind of informational system utility if you kernel panic the box that booms up to the satellite receiver, but unless you're trying to get root on the plane's routers I don't believe there's a need to feel brave.
The braver part is publishing the results of this stuff online under your own name.
AC offers free WhatsApp, iMessage, messenger in most flights. You can ask meta through WhatsApp to effectively browse the net :)
Ah "network neutrality", how you won initially yet lost over time...
With Starlink things may be looking a bit better, but I think demanding net neutrality on in-flight satellite internet and plane-to-cell-tower internet is excessive.
If a ping to a specific IP times out, I wouldn't say the IP is blocked. It could be that ICMP specifically is blocked, following some network rules on the firewall. This is pretty common in entreprise networks to not allow endpoint discovery. I could be missing something and happy to be corrected here, but I was surprised to read that.
I find it's important to remember, too, that a failed PING tells you nothing other than your echo request did not receive a response. If the remote host received your request, and if it responded, are both things a failed PING can't tell you, because both of those things could be true but you still end up with a failed PING. I've seen technicians get tripped up in troubleshooting thinking that a failed PING tells the…
Could y'all point at instructions for how to imitate this limited internet situation ? I ask because, two years ago, I was able to circumvent the Windows-11-requires-internet-and-a-microsoft-account part of the set up for a new laptop computer by doing this on a flight. Apparently, connecting to the airplane wifi (without yet logging in) was enough to satisfy the OS set-up, but limited enough that my laptop didn't re…
I believe this trick doesn't work on Windows 11 anymore, though. Microsoft will happily wait for you to move some place with internet access to finish the OOBE, especially with upcoming changes where they disable various internal mechanisms to bypass the account restrictions.
For about 30 bucks (or a crack) you get more life out of Windows 10 if switching to Linux isn't an option for you. You'll need to log in to an MS account once every three months to keep that going, but you can log out in between. If you live in the EU, you'll get the first year for free if you just sign in to an MS account, which I believe will also work as long as you sign in once every three months to keep the computer registered for updates.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is one of the weirdest IT problems I've ever encountered and it makes me wonder how much of what we rely on is actually marginal. Vernor Vinge had a character who was a "Programmer-Archeologist" on a relativistic starship. Feels more and more prescient as time goes on.
I thought that too up until this GenAI moment, and now I wonder if needing to be an archaeologist will be so valuable if one can get your needs met by a quickly GenAI-written script/program.