some useful notes copied from a blog
Which Indian ISPs are blocking Blogspot blogs ?
Looking at the server referral logs, I can see recent traffic from BSNL,MTNL, Satyam Sify, Airtel Broadband, TouchTel India, VSNL Sancharnet, AsiaNet and Bharti Cellular. However, there are no current referrals from Reliance Infocom, Star Hathway and Tata Internet Services which may signal that they are indeed blocking access to blogspot sites.
Update: Almost all Indian ISPs have blocked access to sites hosted on blogspot.com and geocities.com
Who is to blame ? Indian Government or Local ISP ?
While a Bangalore ISP Spectranet agent claims that they received a letter from Ministry of Communications to block blogspot sites in India, I am not very convinced since in that case, state owned ISPs VSNL and BSNL would have been at the forefront in implementing the notice. But as they are neither blocking Blogger.com or Blogspot.com, I feel the access has been restricted only by a couple of Private ISPs.
The government may have issued a notification to block some blogs on *.blogspot.com and the intelligent ISPs went a step further and blocked the entire blogspot.com domain. Update: Confirmed that the Government of India [Ministry of Telecommunications] did issue a directive to block a few blogspot.com blogs in India.
Whoever may be responsible, India has clearly joined the Internet Filtering Club of China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Euthopia. If the access to restricted websites is not restored in a day or two, this issue is sure to gather active momentum in the Western blogosphere.
How do I know if my ISP blocked access to Blogs ?
» Using DOS Ping Tool. Type the following commands in the MS DOS window (Start->Run->Cmd->Enter):
ping blogspot.comping blogger.com
If your ISP has not restricted access to blogspot site, you should see something like this:
Pinging blogspot.blogger.com [66.102.15.101] with 32 bytes of data:Reply from 66.102.15.101: bytes=32 time=333ms TTL=240Reply from 66.102.15.101: bytes=32 time=329ms TTL=239Reply from 66.102.15.101: bytes=32 time=337ms TTL=239Reply from 66.102.15.101: bytes=32 time=294ms TTL=239Ping statistics for 66.102.15.101: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 294ms, Maximum = 337ms, Average = 323ms
I am Blog Reader. How can I read a blocked blogspot.com site ?
Luckily, there are a ton of alternatives to access restricted websites. Here are some of the most popular workarounds:
» Via RSS Readers Fire up Newsgator, Bloglines, Google Reader or any other web based newsreader and subscribe to the blogspot blog rss by typing xxx.blogspot.com/rss.xml or xxx.blogspot.com/atom.xml in the URL field.
» Via RSS2Email Services Head over to Feedblitz, Bloglet or FeedBurner, type the blog address and you will automatically receive the entire blog posts in your inbox as soon as the blogger posts a story. You will however miss reading the comments.
» Via Google Translate (just replace labnol with any blog name you want to read like indiauncut)
google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=labnol.blogspot.com
» Via Google Mobile Search (replace labnol with the blog name)
google.com/gwt/n?u=labnol.blogspot.com
»Via Helping Pakistan (replace labnol with the blog name)
www.pkblogs.com/labnol
» If any of the above methods fail, try using an anonymous proxy service like www.unipeak.com/ or proxify.com/
I am a Blogger. How can I ensure my readers see my blogspot.com blogs ?
Here are a couple of things that may help your blog fans in India, China or Pakistan read your blog even when the Government has blocked access to the sites:
1. Use Feedburner for syndicating Blog Content [tutorial] - even if the blogspot.com site is blocked, feeds hosted on feedburner will still be accessible.
2. The good news is that while blogspot.com site is blocked, blogger.com is still accessible which means bloggers can create/edit/delete posts or reader comments from the blog control panel. However if the blogger.com site is also blocked, here's what bloggers can do to administrate their blogs:
» Convert the Blogger.com Hostname to a Numeric IP address (http://66.102.15.100) - Most ISPs block site by name but not by IP address so this should work.
» If the ISP is smart and even blocks the numeric ip address, convert the IP address (66.102.15.100) to a decimal number (1113984868) - Now access the blogger start page by typing http://1113984868
