Re: [tor-talk] ISP CenturyLink Blocking Tor?

[Austin Hartzheim <austin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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nathaniel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
> I have been at a close friend's house recently and his provider is 
> CenturyLink (at home I use TimeWarner Cable). I tried to download
> Tor Tails (over BitTorrent) and the Internet literally dropped so I
> closed BitTorrrent, afterwards I launched the Tor Browser Bundle
> and then my computer was disconnected from the router and couldn't
> reconnect and no one at the house could access the Internet, we had
> to reboot the router to fix the issue. I then enabled Pluggable
> Transports (meet-google or something like that) and now I'm able to
> connect to Tor without any issues. This really concerns me as I was
> able to repeat the crash by launching Tor Browser Bundle and crash
> the router again.
> 
> This worries me as I can see a direct link (Launch Tor Browsre
> Bundle without Pluggable Transports) and (Router and Internet
> require Reboot). Could this be a form of censorship within the
> United States?
> 
> I will be returning home today but this is really worrying me as
> it could be a form of censorship within the United States.
> 
> Does anyone have any ideas or thoughts about this?
> 

As I understand the sequence of events:
 1) Use BitTorrent
 2) Connection drops
 3) TBB cannot connect
 4) You restart the router
 5) You started using meek-google; everything is working

My first question is: between steps 4 and 5, did you try using Tor
without meek-google? If so, was it still unable to connect?

Some additional questions: Have you been able to replicate this issue
at all? Have you determined if it is BitTorrent which seems to cause
the connection to drop? Is it only downloading Tails that causes the
issue?

The reason I ask these questions is because I do have experience with
a wireless router that (to the extent I can determine) gets overloaded
by BitTorrent traffic. When this overload happens, the router
essentially stops relaying traffic and seems to drop the Wifi link.
However, the wireless router would continue to broadcast its SSID
(confirmed with airodump-ng), implying that it was still active to
some extent.

As you describe, other people using this router were unable to relay
traffic. Restarting the router would fix the problem.

I should also note that in this case the router is customer-supplied
and is separate from the modem supplied by the ISP.

Hopefully this is less alarming.

Austin

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