Forum does not work from T-Mobile
  • Vote Up0Vote Down muhoomuhoo
    Posts: 41Member
    I have no idea why this is, but this website http://forum.sourcefabric.org does NOT work from T-Mobile. It gets a ERROR GATEWAY 504. Same site from any other network will 200 just fine. Only from T-Mobile will it give the 504 error.

    T-Mobile is using some transparent proxy and sniffing traffic, but then so is Comcast and pretty much every ISP and carrier, but this site works fine from all of them except T-Mobile.

    Also, no other sites error out on T-Mobile, just this one, consistently, 100% of the time. This makes me suspect that there is either something weird about your webserver, or there's a network connectivity problem between wherever you are and T-Mobile.

    FYI.
    Post edited by muhoo at 2013-04-09 19:23:52
  • 9 Comments sorted by
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Albert FRAlbert FR
    Posts: 1,978Member, Airtime Moderator
    Quit T-mobile !
    doing Man in the Middle for a phone company is really not a good thing...
    ----
    Je peux le faire ;) [Pour vous] / I can do it [For You] Gnu/Linux & Media Architect
    Co-founder NessRadio.com
  • Vote Up0Vote Down muhoomuhoo
    Posts: 41Member
    That is not a helpful answer at all.
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Micz FlorMicz Flor
    Posts: 184Administrator
    Thanks for the info. Is there anything we (sourcefabric.org) need to do to solve this problem?
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Albert FRAlbert FR
    Posts: 1,978Member, Airtime Moderator
    Micz Flor said:

    Thanks for the info. Is there anything we (sourcefabric.org) need to do to solve this problem?



    they modify your source code
    that's really difficult to prevent that...
    ----
    Je peux le faire ;) [Pour vous] / I can do it [For You] Gnu/Linux & Media Architect
    Co-founder NessRadio.com
  • Vote Up0Vote Down muhoomuhoo
    Posts: 41Member
    Is there is anything unusual or different about your web servers?

    It is either the network, firewall, the proxy, or the webserver.

    I do not believe it is a routing problem, since I can ping:

    11.|-- 4.53.200.21                0.0%     9   36.7 274.8  36.5 1075. 417.2
     12.|-- 4.69.132.150               0.0%     9  187.9 382.2 183.1 1233. 396.1
     13.|-- 4.69.132.158               0.0%     9  198.7 376.9 182.7 1222. 384.0
     14.|-- 4.69.153.26                0.0%     9  190.7 370.6 184.3 1230. 377.3
     15.|-- 4.69.153.9                 0.0%     9  191.9 404.8 182.5 1540. 468.3
     16.|-- 4.69.135.186               0.0%     9  183.4 385.0 183.1 1428. 430.0
     17.|-- 4.69.148.38                0.0%     8  184.6 246.2 184.5 653.4 164.7
     18.|-- 4.69.134.69                0.0%     8  186.1 241.9 186.1 600.8 145.1
     19.|-- 4.69.137.77                0.0%     8  187.6 232.4 180.6 528.1 119.6
        |  `|-- 4.69.137.65
     20.|-- 4.69.148.186               0.0%     8  189.0 225.4 184.9 466.1  97.3
     21.|-- 4.69.140.26                0.0%     8  190.5 220.5 183.9 413.0  78.5
     22.|-- 4.69.154.139              57.1%     7  191.7 191.5 188.0 194.9   3.4
     23.|-- 195.16.162.254            14.3%     7  206.9 193.4 187.0 206.9   7.6
     24.|-- 213.239.240.164           14.3%     7  197.7 200.6 191.1 210.6   7.4
     25.|-- 213.239.231.37            14.3%     7  199.6 203.1 197.7 213.5   6.7
     26.|-- 5.9.154.18                14.3%     7  201.3 194.5 191.3 201.3   4.0

    Also, I have discovered that I can get to the site via https just fine! So that will be my workaround. You have other ports open on that machine, and they are all accessible. So something is firewalling (transparent proxying, no doubt) only port 80, and it's almost certainly T-Mobile's proxies.


    As for the proxy, I see this as the response from your front-end proxy (nginx, from another network):

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 09:43:23 GMT
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
    Connection: keep-alive
    Vary: Accept-Encoding
    Set-Cookie: Vanilla=deleted; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/
    Set-Cookie: Vanilla=deleted; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/
    Cache-Control: no-transform
    Expires: Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT
    Pragma: no-cache
    Vary: Accept-Encoding


    Maybe the proxies T-Mobile is using are getting confused by something non-standard or non-compliant in that header? As I said, no other site I've visited from their network causes their proxies to choke. Only Sourcefabric.org domains are 504 gateway timing out.

    My bet would be on something in that header. Perhaps the duplicate cookies? The duplicate Vary header? I confess I'm no expert on cacheing.
    Post edited by muhoo at 2013-04-13 06:10:11
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Martin KonecnyMartin Konecny
    Posts: 1,860Member
    @Albert,

    I believe you are thinking of Verizon. T-Mobile doesn't modify packets AFAIK. 


    We've notified one our of network admins to look into this.
    Airtime Pro Hosting: http://airtime.pro
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Bill BurtonBill Burton
    Posts: 52Member
    Hello,

    On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 7:23 PM, muhoo <<br />airtime-support@lists.sourcefabric.org> wrote:

    > I have no idea why this is, but this website http://forum.sourcefabric.orgdoes NOT work from T-Mobile. It gets a ERROR GATEWAY 504. Same site from
    > any other network will 200 just fine. Only from T-Mobile will it give the
    > 504 error. T-Mobile is using some transparent proxy and sniffing traffic,
    > but then so is Comcast and pretty much every ISP and carrier, but this site
    > works fine from all of them except T-Mobile. Also, no other sites error out
    > on T-Mobile, just this one, consistently, 100% of the time. This makes me
    > suspect that there is either something weird about your webserver, or
    > there's a network connectivity problem between wherever you are and
    > T-Mobile. FYI.


    I can confirm very similar results from T-Mobile. Surfed to
    http://forum.sourcefabric.org over WiFi successfully, turned off WiFi and
    refreshed and got the following error page after a minute or so:

    HTTP ERROR: 504

    Gateway Timeout

    RequestURI=http://forum.sourcefabric.org

    Then I tried https://forum.sourcefabric.org. The connection timed out
    after about three minutes.

    This is with an HTC One S phone running Android 4.0.4.

    -Bill
  • Vote Up0Vote Down muhoomuhoo
    Posts: 41Member
    @billburton: If you are using the stock HTC Android, it is very likely that they are doing something even more evil: a man-in-the-middle attack against SSL. This is becoming very sadly common with mobile devices!

    Basically, the carrier adds an SSL certificate of their own to your browser's certificate chain when they configure your phone, then they transparently proxy SSL by providing their own certificate instead of the one from the server. Your browser happily accepts the malicious certificate. This means your "secure" connection is being snooped by your carrier, and going through their proxy network. That "lock" icon can, and often does, mean nothing when you are using a mobile browser installed by a carrier.

    I am using CyanogenMod, a rooted device with an open-source and non-spyware-infected browser.

    That might explain why SSL works for me-- the connection is going directly from my browser to forum.sourcefabric.org-- and is not working for you, because it is instead going through T-Mobile's proxies, just like HTTP is.

    I am now convinced the problem is either T-Mobile's proxies, or something non-standard in the headers that the sourcefabric.org webservers are serving up.
    Post edited by muhoo at 2013-04-28 17:33:11
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Lisa ForbesLisa Forbes
    Posts: 123Member
    I found out I can't view the forums either from my Sprint Android phone (Samsung). I don't get an error but I can't get to the forum.
Add a Comment