Distrowatch

[richmond62]

Distrowatch has been unavailable for 24 hours:

https://distrowatch.com/

[Ajm]

It's working fine from the UK.

[richmond62]

Well, it does not work in Bulgaria.

[Emily-Elizabeth]

Up in Canada. This is a handy site to use https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com

[richmond62]

That's useful, Thank you.

[FourthWorld]

Richmond, is your ISP cable, 5G, or something else?

I've discovered an issue with some 5G systems that may be useful, but of course only if it's relevant.

[richmond62]

5G WiFi . . . and the Distrowatch website was fine until Thursday morning.

[FourthWorld]

Some 5G ISPs use carrier-grade NAT:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT

With the T-Mobile 5G I switched to several months ago, the speed for the price is amazing, but I've seen two issues:

- No port forwarding: only needed if you want to run a server on your home office, but since that includes me it's a drag (VPSes are usually a better option anyway so it doesn't really stop me from deploying anything critical, just a minor annoyance).

- Over-shared IPs: for reasons I haven't yet delved into enough to understand, CGN recycles IPv4 addresses much quicker than cable, DSL, and other options. This means the odds of using an IP that had previously been used by a spammer or other bad actor are higher. Any site that had banned an IP for good reason in the past has always run the risk of punishing innocent people when the IP gets recycled. And with CGN that's happening more often.

It happened to me recently. In most cases I can just reboot my cell hotspot and get a new IP and I'm fine.

The other day there was a glitch in which I kept getting the same IP, one that was apparently used to spam broadly because I was unable to access a fair number of sites (thankfully resolved by the next morning).

One remedy is for all sys admins to realize IPs are recycled, the bad guys use VPNs now anyway, and stop all filtering based on IP.

But legacy systems are plentiful, and sensible policies aren't.

So we live in a world of digital vigilante bots, and like any dependence on ad hoc justice outside of due process, innocent people will become collateral damage.

All of this is a long-winded way to suggest rebooting your 5G hotspot and see if that improves your situation.