Is my ISP censoring websites?

[Oifish]

There is a website I like to use to find new music called Obscuresound.com. It's does not host illegal downloads or anything of that nature. When I swtiched ISP's from Brighthouse (Indianapolis) to Suddenlink (Parkersburg, WV) I am no longer able to access the site. For a while I thought it may just be down, but then I found if I use Tor instead of Firefox, IE, or Chrome I can access the site. I have done a full system scan for malware or viruses and nothing turned up. Anyone know what could be causing this or is the ISP blocking this website for some reason?

 

[Bubbaleone]

Use tools running on M-Lab to test your Internet connection. They have tools that test a variety of different scenarios including traffic shaping and blocking.

 

[Oifish]

hmm no evidence of throttling or shaping found.... this is odd

 

[Bubbaleone]

hmm no evidence of throttling or shaping found.... this is odd

Is it possible that your browser, antivirus, or antimalware is set to automatically monitor and block black-listed HTTP websites without you being aware of it? Depending on whose software it is, I've seen a lot of sites I personally consider safe end up on these black-lists. For example; NOD32 is notorious for that.


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[Oifish]

I thought that as well, but the website failed to load when using my phone on wifi as well.

 

[Bubbaleone]

I thought that as well, but the website failed to load when using my phone on wifi as well.

Get the actual IP Address of the website being blocked, then go to You Get Signal and check if that IP address is blocked on port 80 (HTTP). There's other tools available there also. And since you mentioned using wifi for phone access, are you behind a wireless capable router that the ISP provided? How's your network setup?

 

[Oifish]

The two IPs of the website are not blocked on port 80. I am just using the modem/router provided my the ISP. It gives me limited ability to change the configuration. I am using a wired connection instead of wireless. I was able to access the website my changing my DNS to google's public DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.8.4).

 

[Steltek]

The two IPs of the website are not blocked on port 80. I am just using the modem/router provided my the ISP. It gives me limited ability to change the configuration. I am using a wired connection instead of wireless. I was able to access the website my changing my DNS to google's public DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.8.4).

In the event you didn't just type them wrong, the Google public DNS settings are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (not 8.8.8.4 as you posted).

 

[Oifish]

In the event you didn't just type them wrong, the Google public DNS settings are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (not 8.8.8.4 as you posted).

oops, typo. thanks.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Steve Gibson's excellent DNS Benchmark utility will test your connection with microsecond accuracy, and precisely determine the fastest and most reliable DNS nameservers for your locale.

The utility first tests your locale with over 4,000 established global nameservers as a baseline. The second part of the test uses the top fifty of those nameservers to determine the two fastest nameservers for your exact geographic location.

 

[Oifish]

Steve Gibson's excellent DNS Benchmark utility will test your connection with microsecond accuracy, and precisely determine the fastest and most reliable DNS nameservers for your locale.

The utility first tests your locale with over 4,000 established global nameservers as a baseline. The second part of the test uses the top fifty of those nameservers to determine the two fastest nameservers for your exact geographic location.

Haha, I just found that program when researching DNS nameservers on google. I was able to find one that is much faster than the one automatically selected by my ISP, as well as google's, and obscuresound.com works just fine. Thanks for all your help!