Charter Implements SiteFinder-Like DNS

paulbiz writes "Charter Cable's DNS servers have just started resolving all invalid hostnames and pointing them to their own error page. The About page states: 'This service automatically eliminates many of the error pages you may encounter as you surf the web. No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.' It has an 'opt-out' page, but when you use it Charter simply sets a cookie that makes their page redirect errors to Microsoft Live Search instead!" One more reason to use OpenDNS, where you can actually opt out of the custom error page.

Comments

Re:Pretty Confusing

[TheRaven64]

Do you use your Internet connection for anything other than HTTP? If so, this 'service' could break things for you. If you use FTP, for example, and typo a hostname then instead of getting a 'server not found' error, you will get a 'connection refused' error. This will make it look like the host is up, but the FTP server is broken.

The same is true of pings. If you ping a non-existent host, then instead of being told 'this host does not exist,' you will get ping returns from their server.

This can potentially break a lot of things. On the plus side, since the ISP is now directly manipulating the data flowing over your Internet connection (and violating a few RFCs), it can no longer claim to be a common carrier and is therefore liable for all copyright infringement committed by its subscribers.

Re:Run your own DNS resolver!

[jafiwam]

Well Charter in particular has been blocking DNS ports to anything but their DNS servers for a long time.

So running your own resolver on a Charter line probably will basically mean no DNS.

ORSN is better.

[JamesTRexx]

I've been looking at different alternatives to the standard root servers and didn't like OpenDNS either as they also change DNS replies.
My search ended with ORSN, a European "backup" of ICANN servers. This way I shouldn't be affected by attacks and outages on ICANN servers.

rolled out w/o letting their support know

[_peter]

I noticed this last night, called to complain about it, and spent over an hour on the phone with their tech support. First I had to convince them it was really happening and it was a change to their DNS, it wasn't some browser setting I had ``accidentally'' changed. So they apparently made this change without letting their 1st and 2nd level support know about it.

Then once I got high enough, they tried to weasel out of it with their lame opt-out solution, which even if it worked wouldn't help when I'm making non-browser-based connections. So I guess they want all of my typo'd telnet, ssh, ftp and ping commands to hit their search server instead?

At the end, I asked to be transferred to account services to cancel (gosh I hope Bell doesn't pull the same shit in a month), and the admittedly very understanding engineer begged for a day to look into a way to completely remove the feature from my account. So I'll be calling back tonight.