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Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by jamiek88 on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:16PM (#16996281)
Well that thread of conspiracy theories, hot air and cries of censorship yesterday was instructive.

These corporations have zero benefit of the doubt level of trust.

A few voices to be fair pointed out 1.1.1.1 is often incorrectly used and issues with it becoming ‘live’ mostly likely caused the outage.

Not judging this response btw, I can clearly see why ATT and other big telco wouldn’t get much leeway.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by tptacek on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:44PM (#16996542)
Instructive in the sense that for any given technical controversy on HN, there will be a couple people that have some connection to the topic and can speak with some justified confidence about it, and several hundred people who read the title and, if we're lucky, the lede graf of the story and then just write stream of consciousness extrapolations --- also, instructive to note that HN does not, ceteris paribus, do a good job of upvoting the authoritative comments over the superficial riffing.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by throwaway41441 on Saturday May 05, 2018 @02:48PM (#17003165)
> lede graf

Journalistic jargon for "lead paragraph"

https://underthecurve.github.io/jekyll/update/2016/12/29/hed...

> ceteris paribus

"all other things being equal"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by brownbat on Saturday May 05, 2018 @10:47PM (#17005015)
> HN does not, ceteris paribus, do a good job of upvoting the authoritative comments over the superficial riffing.

Top comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982493

Seems... fine? Our comments were useful enough for Ars to apparently base their entire reporting on them. (Ok, mixed feelings there...)

Or, wait, are you saying Prince's reaction was the useful, authoritative one in this example?

Most commenters thought he was making a bit of a leap. Is that what you're actually pushing back on?

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by berg01 on Friday May 04, 2018 @02:24PM (#16996955)
> ceteris paribus

I enjoy googling a new phrase as much as the next person... but really?

From WP: Ceteris paribus or caeteris paribus is a Latin phrase meaning "other things equal". English translations of the phrase include "all other things being equal" or "other things held constant" or "all else unchanged".

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by amaccuish on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:25PM (#16996349)
I wasn't one of the conspiracy theorists but I do expect ISPs to get these things right. It's literally their job, they should be experts.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by rayiner on Friday May 04, 2018 @02:26PM (#16996985)
I was just gchatting my wife in Edge, and the message entry box wraps lines on the character level (breaking a single word over two lines). Something that nobody would ever want to do and nobody could possibly think is the right behavior. Google and Microsoft develop two of the only three relevant browser engines, and indeed have basically supplanted W3C in setting web standards. But a simple text-entry field on a Google site running in Microsoft's browser doesn't work properly.

So is it really surprising that AT&T handled an obscure IP address the wrong way?

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by sixothree on Friday May 04, 2018 @04:32PM (#16998041)
I am not surprised if/that google degrades the experience of their products on other browsers. I believe this has been topic of discussion a number of times on HN.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by yndoendo on Saturday May 05, 2018 @04:01PM (#17003500)
Google also degrades the experiences on the own platform because they think they know what is right and needed.

Example: Android platform with their own Maps application will kill phone in minutes.

Maps continually will ask to enable location, which is not needed just to look at maps and search, every few seconds after selecting no previously. Only way around is by checking don't ask again. Bam, infinite loop of software asking with policy refereeing answer. Google Maps kills a phone's battery with-in minutes.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by ben_jones on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:06PM (#16998345)
I think Google is aware their products perform better on Chrome and does not devote resources to correct this, leading the user experiences on Edge or even firefox to be similar but not equal.

I'd make the argument that the parent should not be down voted because Google, perhaps in a small way, allows degraded experiences on other platforms for one reason or another.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by sli on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:42PM (#16998618)
There was a short time when Google made Hangouts Chrome-only, but faking the User-Agent would make it load. Turned out, yep, Hangouts worked totally fine in Firefox. They just refused to let me load it and that's it.

I don't think you can do that anymore, though. But I haven't tried it in a while.

A huge problem I see with the web is that it's is missing concessions for "advanced" users. I get that we're a smaller market, but come on.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by comboy on Saturday May 05, 2018 @07:42AM (#17001402)
I don't know the situation, but in theory, it could work fine for you, but 1% of the functionality could have been not working properly for 1% of users. That's thousands of unhappy users that would decide that Google delivered unfinished not working product and that quality of their products sucks.

I would also say money wasted on providing support for those users but I'm still not sure if such thing exists.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by AlphaSite on Saturday May 05, 2018 @11:30AM (#17002205)
Then they should have waited. Google gets zero leeway for this kind of behaviour from me. Especially considering how hard they leveraged google.com to push chrome.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by jsjohnst on Saturday May 05, 2018 @09:33PM (#17004843)
Google is the new Microsoft. History repeats itself. The major difference this time is you aren’t the customer, rather more the product, but that’s just semantics in this specific case.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by leesalminen on Friday May 04, 2018 @05:58PM (#16998734)
I tried to use Hangouts last week with the latest Firefox on a beefy machine. While it wasn’t explicitly blocked, it froze the whole browser after 30 seconds. Never got into the meeting.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by olyjohn on Friday May 04, 2018 @06:42PM (#16999021)
I just tried using Hangouts yesterday. Did not work in FF, but oh wow it magically worked in Chrome. Also, the only Hangouts "Desktop" app still requires Chrome. Also when you use Hangouts on iOS, and you open a link, it asks if you want to use Chrome (which isn't even installed) or Safari. how about use the goddamn default browser? Nope, it's gonna ask me to use Chrome for the rest of eternity. Total shit.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by 4ad on Saturday May 05, 2018 @09:01AM (#17001629)
I do have Chrome installed on iOS, although I don't generally want to use it. But now that I have it installed, Hangouts on iOS opens links ONLY in Chrome. It's infuriating.

Oh course the "desktop" (not really) Hangouts app also only opens links in Chrome.

Don't worry though, Hangouts will soon be discontinued and we'll have to complain about some Google chat app.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by vatueil on Friday May 04, 2018 @08:18PM (#16999475)
It's well known that that's simply because Safari is the only default browser option on iOS, so apps have to use workarounds if they want to let users open links in a different browser. Though even then all iOS browsers must use Apple WebKit.

On other operating systems you can set the default browser to be Firefox, Chrome, or whatever else you want, and different browser engines are allowed.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by leesalminen on Friday May 04, 2018 @09:25PM (#16999748)
The inbox app for iOS has a “remember my choice” radio button for the Safari/Chrome choice. Somehow the app hasn’t remembered that choice for several months.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by georgebarnett on Saturday May 05, 2018 @01:24AM (#17000473)
The same happens in Hangouts. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to choose safari.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by eropple on Friday May 04, 2018 @07:11PM (#16999174)
My experience differs: using Google stuff on Chrome is worse. Occasionally one or another of my Gmail tabs jumps off into space on Chrome on my Mac and pins a core.

Chrome on Wayland, with GNOME 3 in particular, pretty much always pins a core too, but not for Gmail-related reasons.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by samstave on Saturday May 05, 2018 @12:45PM (#17002549)
If youre a net eng at one of the largest isp/telcos how could you possibly call 1.1.1.1 “obscure”?
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by true_religion on Saturday May 05, 2018 @04:17PM (#17003564)
Internet Explore, Firefox, and Edge don't support the 'break-word' value for word-break in CSS.

Only Webkit based browsers support that. If you make the mistake of testing/developing primarily in Safari + Chrome, you'll never discover the error.

They might have also used 'keep-all' which isn't supported in Edge, but is supported everywhere else, and have a fallback rule of break-all leading the behavior seen.

tl;dr:

There's actually no universal way of setting word-breaks for textarea's or pseudo-textarea, so I can't imagine if that writing a rich text input field is easy considering you have no foundations to work on.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by jsjohnst on Saturday May 05, 2018 @09:38PM (#17004864)
> If you make the mistake of testing/developing primarily in Safari + Chrome

If random startups can test all common browsers and ensure good experiences, I can’t see any reasonable justification why Google can’t.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by justinator on Saturday May 05, 2018 @03:21AM (#17000784)
Invest in QA, folks!
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by supertrope on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:43PM (#16996535)
AT&T has long provided a sub-par Internet connection service.

Their wireless router and DSL modem "U-Verse" gateway device lacks a true bridge mode, has a small NAT table, and you must use it because it contains a 802.1x certificate. You can use your own router with a rather involved hack: http://blog.0xpebbles.org/Bypassing-At-t-U-verse-hardware-NA... They instructed customers (including small businesses) to get off 10.X.X.X, presumably because they were considering CG-NAT, although they have since done some IPv6 deployment.

The original AT&T faded away with declining long distance revenue which they milked to the end until cellphones and Internet access became the main market. It took tax credits meant for "video dial tone" broadband deployment and used them to build their cellular network.

Its ADSL deployment use PPPoE and ATM which can cause MTU mismatch. ATM itself is a telco mistake. European access oligopoly members wanted 32 bytes because that suited voice frame transport and they thought data transport would never sell. American counterparts wanted 64 bytes for better data delivery. They compromised on 53: 48 for payload and 5 for header. With newer "U-Verse" ASDL they've finally eliminated this layer of overhead. (But no more 3rd party modems).

It decided to deploy VDSL instead of make the true upgrade to fiber. But they also cut costs by not building enough remote terminals so many customers have slow and unreliable links. Fast VDSL speeds (e.g. 100Mbps) aren't possible if customers are a mile away, or more. How much money have they spent on truck rolls diagnosing issues? Is it less than just building a more robust network to begin with?

Since 2005 they've been complaining that customers are using too much Internet and they need to slice and dice the Internet with data caps, application specific throttling, etc. And get more tax credits and deregulation which they promise will be used for broadband investment.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by tptacek on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:46PM (#16996566)
I've had better service from U-Verse and, more recently, AT&T Fiber than I have from Comcast.

But really, the point this thread is making isn't about whether you approve of all of AT&T's business decisions, but rather whether their backbone engineers can properly manage a network.

I'm interested in the opinions of people who have managed default-free BGP peering before on whether AT&T does a good job, but I'm not so much interested in reading another dslreports thread about whether AT&T is a "good ISP".

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by mjcl on Friday May 04, 2018 @02:22PM (#16996940)
My experience with AT&T was that they were overly bureaucratic but outside of those rules anything goes. For example, they didn't ask for an LOA for BGP announcements of other people's IP space. When we were turning up a new Comcast circuit we accidentally leaked Comcast's customer routes (~5000) to AT&T and they were accepted.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by supertrope on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:53PM (#16996649)
This technical glitch is in their CPE boxes not the backbone network.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by tptacek on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:56PM (#16996681)
Good to know! Add to the set of people who's AT&T network engineering opinions are interesting "anyone who has managed a very large scale distribution layer network". :)
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by kbenson on Friday May 04, 2018 @09:51PM (#16999855)
> How much money have they spent on truck rolls diagnosing issues? Is it less than just building a more robust network to begin with?

There's always the chance they can try to put the customer on the hook for a truck roll, turning a loss into revenue.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by halbritt on Friday May 04, 2018 @09:23PM (#16999736)
Eh, I'm using one of the crap Uverse gateways stuck in bridge mode connected their Gigapower service. I consistently get 900mbps up and down when connected to a GigE port. All this for $80. That's way, way above par IMHO.

As a service. The gateways are still crap. Don't use 'em for routing or wireless. They are laughably bad.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by pnutjam on Friday May 04, 2018 @10:50PM (#17000069)
Mine kept losing it's "bridge mode", maybe twice a year. Very frustrating and unpredictable when I was trying to access my x2go server remotely.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by Sir_Vival on Saturday May 05, 2018 @12:36PM (#17002518)
I live in a rural area and depend on ATT's unlimited hotspot plan (that's now defunct) for my internet. It uses CG NAT and provides no IPv6 addresses.

However, you throw a SIM card from your phone in the hotspot and you'll magically have an IPv6 address, even without changing the APN. It's ridiculous that I have to resort to using a VPN to bypass all the troubles being behind a CG NAT entails.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by ferongr on Saturday May 05, 2018 @10:11AM (#17001867)
You should come to Europe and see the completely shitty ZTE and Huawei CPEs carriers foist upon their users.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by paulie_a on Friday May 04, 2018 @02:37PM (#16997092)
Calling their modem/routers sub-par is being far too generous. They are pieces of shit.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Friday May 04, 2018 @06:44PM (#16999036)
From experience I can tell you that this guy is correct. Or at least he was. I had U-Verse as my first internet service at an apartment years ago and, in addition to waiting a month for them to hook it up, the modem they sent me didn't work. The tech came out (weeks later, of course), confirmed it didn't work, and proceeded to swap it with literally every single spare he had in his van. We got lucky on the last one. While chatting he admitted they were the some of the worst equipment he's ever seen.

Some of the branch locations at work have U-Verse as their only option. I don't have to deal with their day-to-day problems but the help desk tells me they're still pretty crap.

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by paulie_a on Saturday May 05, 2018 @12:50PM (#17002570)
I am going to go extremely hard and say literally everything non porn related is a scam. TLDR fuck ICO
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by quakenul on Friday May 04, 2018 @02:09PM (#16996786)
While it's reasonable to expect them to get it right, it is obviously going to go wrong from time to time, as with experts working any other field.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by halbritt on Friday May 04, 2018 @09:21PM (#16999730)
Yeah, no. ISPs don't really employ experts any more. The experts won't work for them. They haven't done anything innovative since the heady days of the dotcom boom.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by cbsmith on Saturday May 05, 2018 @01:01AM (#17000405)
You have an amusing belief about the correlation between expertise and the lack of errors/mistakes.

Also, reading your comment, I couldn't help but think of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by monochromatic on Saturday May 05, 2018 @12:09PM (#17002398)
I’m an expert at my job. I still get things wrong sometimes.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by some_account on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:51PM (#16996628)
Experts get things wrong constantly.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by dang on Friday May 04, 2018 @06:19PM (#16998870)
It's at least gratifying to see that the top two root comments after the dust settled were ones that got it right. Though I suppose some of the upvotes may have come in after this information was available. (Edit: I checked and it doesn't look like it.)
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by kbenson on Friday May 04, 2018 @07:15PM (#16999192)
> Though I suppose some of the upvotes may have come in after this information was available. (Edit: I checked and it doesn't look like it.)

Oh, man. It would be so fun to run vote analysis on comments over time. I'm jealous now. :)

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by phyller on Friday May 04, 2018 @08:11PM (#16999447)
dang should do a Hacker News AMA
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by sillysaurus3 on Friday May 04, 2018 @08:23PM (#16999505)
The risk far outweighs the reward.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by notatoad on Friday May 04, 2018 @02:29PM (#16997017)
The thread might have been fun of conspiracy theories, but the top comment the whole day was the one giving At&t the benefit of the doubt.

(Fwiw, I was personally on board with the conspiracy theorists.)

Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by craftyguy on Friday May 04, 2018 @08:18PM (#16999476)
Why would you trust what AT&T is saying publicly? This could have very well been an experiment to "see if anyone noticed", folks noticed, so here's the default "we didn't mean it, you can trust us" explanation.

Major ISPs generally do not act in the best interest of their customers, especially when the action is allowing access to service that hurts their ability to collect more information about their users. They certainly do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.

[dead]
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by craftyguy on Friday May 04, 2018 @08:29PM (#16999524)
It's easy to dismiss comments you don't like as "tinfoil hat"-like, but it's much harder to explain why they should be suddenly trusted. Care to try?
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by fourthark on Friday May 04, 2018 @09:14PM (#16999701)
Don't trust, but also don't overestimate. Incompetence is always the likelier explanation.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by craftyguy on Friday May 04, 2018 @09:46PM (#16999838)
Except AT&T has a long history of malice under the guise of incompetence. Just today: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170426/05094537241/att-u...
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by fourthark on Saturday May 05, 2018 @06:15PM (#17004151)
I'm sure you can find a better example than that. That's not malicious, it's just annoying marketing.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by larkeith on Friday May 04, 2018 @09:57PM (#16999883)
While incompetence may be most likely, alternative possibilities should still be considered, and kept in mind for future context.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by notyourwork on Friday May 04, 2018 @11:01PM (#17000100)
Im not suggesting they should be trusted. I'm just saying not everything requires the same overblown reaction.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by larkeith on Friday May 04, 2018 @09:56PM (#16999876)
Not everything is a conspiracy, but nor should plausible explanations be dismissed out of hand without providing evidence or arguments. AT&T has lost the right to be trusted, or even to have the benefit of the doubt, thanks to a long history of anticonsumer activities.
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by giancarlostoro on Saturday May 05, 2018 @07:38AM (#17001395)
Well it never made sense to me why block one DNS provider and not the rest? Ah well...
Re:AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just ... by avree on Saturday May 05, 2018 @01:02AM (#17000411)
Anyone have a link to the thread?