Re: Slow Down

On Sun, 14 Sep 2008 14:46:42 +0700, Good soldier
<Decypher_address@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Newsgroups such as this one are carried by thousands of different news
servers all over the world. If you're getting a slow response, it just
means the particular server that you connect to is slow.

You didn't say which server you are connecting to, but possibly you
are using a free one provided by your ISP. You don't have to use that
if you don't want to. There are plenty of other news servers in other
locations that you could use, some free, some chargeable. For that
reason, Usenet is one thing the Thai government will never be able to
block access to.

Chris


Chris, I am aware that there is more then one NNPT server in the world
and I use several different providers.

My point was that using the same servers that I have been using for
the past several years I have a sudden slow down in both speed and
frequency of dropped connections in the past week.

Thus my question.


Cheers,

schweik
(Correct Address is goodsoldierschweikatgmaildotcom)

Moreover, I think that now any government can block Usenet access to
ordinary citizen inside the country. The usual excuse is security
reasons, offensive posts, pornographic files, etc. The era of free
anonymous internet is a thing of the past IMO.

I don't think so, Mort. Its not like blocking access to a web site
where that site is hosted at one location only and can be identified
by its IP address. As I said in my reply to GS, there are thousands of
news servers located all over the world and the Thai government
couldn't possibly keep track of and block access to them all. If they
blocked one it would be easy to switch to another.

Chris

Sorry Chris but you're wrong. Both Singapore and Thailand monitor
and block Internet traffic.

Wait a minute, I never claimed that Thailand doesn't block any
internet traffic. Its well known that they try to block access to
several web sites. What I'm saying is that they cannot effectively
block access to Usenet newsgroups for the simple reason that there are
so many NNTP servers around the world all carrying the same
information. If they blocked one then users could just switch to
another. I specifically referred to Usenet, but apparently you took
that to mean access to web sites.

Chris

They don't block access to a server, in the sense that they build some
sort gate at the server's front door. They simply monitor all Internet
traffic flow into or out of Thailand or Singapore and put a filter in
the monitoring system that stops transmission of data to or from
either a specific server, or messages containing specified data, or
messages on a specific subject.

Sorry, but I think you misunderstand how it works. They cannot, and do
not, examine the detailed contents of all internet traffic passing in
and out of the country. For a start, internet traffic is broken up and
transmitted in discrete IP packets as it leaves your computer. For
anyone intercepting that data it would be impossible to tell whether
the information contained in one of those packets formed part of the
subject of a message or had some other meaning. Its only when all the
data has reached its destination and has been reconstructed that the
context and meaning become clear. If you don't think what I'm saying
is correct then please provide a real-life example of a message
subject, or text of a message that you have been unable to post from
Thailand, and tell me where you were trying to send it.

What you say is quite interesting given that the Singapore Government
has arrested, tried , convicted, and sentenced an individual for
posession of pornography based on interception of his downloads.

I'm not aware of that. Do you have any reference to that specific
case? Are you sure they actually identified pornography being
transferred on the network as part of the interception process, or was
it just that they identified him as someone accessing a known
pornography site from his IP address? There's a big difference.


While certainly internet messages are broken up and sent as packets
there is nothing that prevents interception of the messages and I
can't imagine why you assert that it is impossible as it has been done
for years.

Because unless you know what the context of the intercepted data is,
it becomes meaningless while it remains broken up in individual
internet IP packets. You can't tell that one part of the intercepted
data would form the subject of a web message board, so you can't
filter entire messages based on message subject, as you claimed. IP
packets may be transmitted over different routes, so even if you
intercept one part of someone's message you can't be sure you can
capture any other part of that same message.


Certainly one can set up a tunnel and bypass the normal ports and
bypass the monitors but that is immaterial for this discussion. If you
had read the reference I provided you would have read the statement
that "analysis of the traffic suggest that the authorities are
intercepting anything on standard SMTP port 25, regardless of the
destination IP address".

I read the link you posted, and I think that journalist has just put
together an article based on something he doesn't really understand.
He says that outgoing email traffic slows down as the working day
progresses, and then make the groundless assumption that it's evidence
the government is monitoring his emails. There's paranoia for you.

I suppose non-technical people conjure up this image in their minds of
their outgoing emails scrolling through a censors screen while it
crawls out of their computer at a snails pace as the censor reads it.
Anyone who knows anything about networking realises that's nonsense.
Its not at all surprising that internet traffic slows down as the
working day progresses. As more people go online the networks become
more congested because the ISPs have insufficient capacity in their
systems to fully support demand at peak periods. There's nothing more
sinister going on than that.


I'm amazed that you think Internet monitoring is not, and has not for
some years, been going on.

What actually happens is the Thai government block access to certain
web sites. There are no reports so far of them having blocked access
to any NNTP servers. They do that by getting local internet service
providers to block the IP address of the web sites they don't like. If
you want proof of what I'm saying then set up a VPN connection to a
location outside of Thailand and try to access any of those "blocked"
web sites. You'll find that you can connect to any of them because
your connection to the web site is through the VPN tunnel, and not at
the local ISP level. However, the data itself is still passing through
the CAT international gateway.


Chris

Chris, you seem to be ignoring the crux of my original post that my
news group feeds seem to have slowed down.

That's where we started off, and the point of replying to you was to
assure you that any slowdown you may be experiencing was nothing to do
with the Thai government blocking anything. If they had blocked access
to your news server you wouldn't be able to connect at all. The
solution to your problem is lies in correct network design and
configuration somewhere along the line. It has nothing to do with
censorship.


You start by advising me that there many NNTP servers - a fact that I
have been aware of for about as long as Usenet has been in existence.
Added to that I use two different NNTP accounts, both of which have
slowed down. This my original question whether it was only me, or did
others experience the same phonomania. which, I might add, you have
never responded to.

I would have responded to that, but I can't because I'm not in
Thailand right now. If I was I would have given you a better answer.


We are getting pretty far afield when we start talking about TCP/IP
protocol when the original question was "are things slowing down".

On the contrary, TCP/IP, protocols, network configuration etc. are
central to the issue of resolving problems with slowness of networks.
Nothing else really matters.


I really don't want to get involved in a detailed discussion of TCP/IP
protocol as, while it did interest me 20 years ago, I have pretty much
come to believe that there better things to worry about.

So, Chris, whether you want to assume you won or lost, as far as I am
concerned this exchange has ended.


OK. I'm not trying to "win" any argument here. You posed a question
about a problem you were having and I tried to steer you in the right
direction to resolve it. In particular, I wanted to dispel the idea
you had that interception by the government might have been the cause.

Chris
.

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