(My thanks to Fabio Calvigioni (oRi0n) for translating this post into Italian, below.)
Update: Several commenters say the problem is gone, and that appears to be true. We hope it will continue. - July 23, 2007
We care about delivering a great Internet experience worldwide, and it appears that many Italians are poorly served by their current DNS infrastructure.
Several times over the last several months, Telecom Italia has blocked DNS requests from OpenDNS servers. What happens? Our customers in Italy are unable to resolve domains that uses Telecom Italia for their authoritative DNS, for example: pf.rossoalice.virgilio.it (a large Italian ISP).
For months, we’ve jumped through technical hoops to work around these blocks, even though all we’re doing is what any recursive DNS service would do: ask for the location of a domain from the respective authoritative server.
We’ve communicated through several channels: email, IRC, telephone. (We don’t speak Italian, but we’ve made an effort through translation services.)
Result? Nothing. (In DNS land, we’d call it a SERVFAIL.)
If anyone responsible and responsive at Telecom Italia wants to help us resolve this matter, we’re more than willing to work this out directly.
For all those Italian customers who have been affected now and again, we apologize. We are still trying to resolve this problem via normal channels. But we’ve been quite patient so far, and we’re a bit tired of banging our heads against this particular wall.
Here’s why we’re naming Telecom Italia.
First, dnsti.interbusiness.it and dnsts.interbusiness.it have blocked our requests.
Second, the interbusiness.it domain is owned by Telecom Italia, according to whois data.
Domain: interbusiness.it
Status: ACTIVE
Created: 1996-01-29 00:00:00
Last Update: 2007-01-30 00:36:13
Expire Date: 2008-01-29
Registrant
Name: Telecom Italia S.p.A.
ContactID: TELE616-ITNIC
Address: Via Paolo Di Dono, 44
Roma
00143
RM
IT
Created: 2007-03-01 10:44:12
Last Update: 2007-03-01 10:44:12
Nameservers
dnsti.interbusiness.it
dns.opb.interbusiness.it
dns3.nic.it
dnsts.interbusiness.it
I look forward to sharing a solution.
Telecom Italia non risponde ad OpenDNS
OpenDNS si impegna per fornire in tutto il mondo il miglior servizio agli utenti di Internet, ma sembra che molti italiani debbano fare i conti con un’infrastruttura DNS molto carente.
Per diverse volte negli ultimi mesi Telecom Italia ha bloccato richieste DNS dai server OpenDNS. Cosa succede quindi? Molti nostri clienti in Italia non riescono a risolvere nomi di domini che usano Telecom Italia come server DNS autoritativi. Per esempio, pf.rossoalice.virgilio.it (un importante ISP italiano) viene risolto in maniera errata.
Per mesi abbiamo utilizzato espedienti tecnici per aggirare questi blocchi, anche se tutto quello che stiamo facendo è quello che farebbe ogni servizio di DNS ricorsivo: richiedere l’indirizzo di un dominio al suo rispettivo server autoritativo.
Abbiamo provato a contattare Telecom Italia per email, IRC e telefono (non parliamo italiano ma abbiamo fatto dei tentativi utilizzando dei servizi di traduzione).
Risultato: nessuna risposta (nel campo dei DNS lo chiamiamo SERVFAIL).
Se qualche responsabile o addetto di Telecom Italia è interessato ad aiutarci a risolvere questo problema saremmo dispostissimi a collaborare direttamente in tale senso.
Chiediamo scusa a tutti i clienti italiani che hanno riscontrato e stanno ancora riscontrando questo problema. Stiamo ancora provando ad eliminare il blocco attraverso i normali canali. Fin qui siamo stati abbastanza pazienti ma ora siamo un po’ stanchi di doverci scervellare con questo problema.
Ecco perché crediamo che Telecom Italia sia la causa del problema.
Innanzitutto, dnsti.interbusiness.it e dnsts.interbusiness.it hanno bloccato le nostre richieste. Inoltre, il dominio interbusiness.it, secondo i dati del whois, appartiene a Telecom Italia.
Domain: interbusiness.it
Status: ACTIVE
Created: 1996-01-29 00:00:00
Last Update: 2007-01-30 00:36:13
Expire Date: 2008-01-29
Registrant
Name: Telecom Italia S.p.A.
ContactID: TELE616-ITNIC
Address: Via Paolo Di Dono, 44
Roma
00143
RM
IT
Created: 2007-03-01 10:44:12
Last Update: 2007-03-01 10:44:12
Nameservers
dnsti.interbusiness.it
dns.opb.interbusiness.it
dns3.nic.it
dnsts.interbusiness.it
Spero di aggiornarvi presto con una soluzione.
Jim D
I’m not surprised, quite frankly. We get an unbelievable amount of spam from virgilio.it addresses (which are, for that reason, blocked completely from my network). Honestly, I didn’t even realize it was a real ISP - I thought it was a spammer’s own domain.
posted on July 17th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Urban
I have telecom Italia as ISP and I use OpenDNS on my linux box.
To bypass this problem I have a little trick that I posted on my blog: http://www.urbands.net/stormedbrains/2007/07/17/opendns-vs-telecom-italia/
posted on July 17th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Telecom irragionevole con OpenDNS : Time’n’doom
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posted on July 17th, 2007 at 11:17 am
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posted on July 17th, 2007 at 11:25 am
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posted on July 18th, 2007 at 6:52 am
David
Add these lines to the file “\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts” (Attention this file is usually read-only)
#—————————————-
# DNS Alice
82.53.187.65 www.rossoalice.it
82.53.187.65 rossoalice.alice.it
82.53.187.65 hp.rossoalice.alice.it
81.74.238.30 portale.rossoalice.alice.it
85.33.2.57 mailstore.rossoalice.alice.it
85.33.2.58 rubrica.rossoalice.alice.it
81.74.238.31 auth.rossoalice.alice.it
81.74.238.31 authsrs.alice.it
81.74.238.34 wp.rossoalice.alice.it
81.74.238.29 registra.rossoalice.alice.it
81.74.238.34 webmail.rossoalice.alice.it
81.74.238.34 pf.rossoalice.alice.it
62.211.73.38 miospazio.rossoalice.alice.it
212.48.10.54 mail.alice.it
85.33.2.43 tree.mailstore.rossoalice.alice.it
85.33.2.57 mail.rossoalice.alice.it
#—————————————-
With these modifications the Alice’s webmail can be used without problems with OpenDNS Server
posted on July 18th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
John Roberts
While workarounds are welcome, we want to make this easy for everyone.
Messing with the hosts file isn’t easy.
posted on July 18th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Ilgaz
As spamcop.net user I am not surprised too
posted on July 18th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
rob
you could write them in english too. i think they’ll understand. not sure if they’ll respond
posted on July 18th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
habib
thanks david for your work it really solved another problem for me .
posted on July 19th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
damidalla
As of today, 20th July, it seems that with openDNS I can access to all the Alice ADSL services. Is it a workaround by you openDNS guys, or did Telecom Italia answer to your questions? It would be almost a miracle, to be heard by Telecom Italia!
posted on July 19th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Michele
I’m an italian user, I’m under a Telecom Italia network and I use OpenDNS; a few days ago I could not visit some of Telecom Italia sites because OpenDNS didn’t resolve the ip. But right now, in this moment, everything seems to be allright… I used none of the tricks posted above, and, I don’t know why, I can visit Telecom Italia sites.
posted on July 20th, 2007 at 5:46 am
Problemi Opendns su Alice.it sembrano continuare, ma c’è una soluzione
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posted on July 20th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Massimiliano
Hello John, i posted this problem in March 29th here http://www.nel-web.it/servizi-web/136/opendns-e-aliceit.html and with david help the problem is partially resolved
posted on July 20th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Urban
It seem that now OpenDNS resolve correctly Alice’s addresses…
posted on July 20th, 2007 at 8:28 am
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[…] parlato qualche giorno fa dell’ostruzionismo che Alice e Telecom Italia stavano facendo ad OpenDNS, fornendo una soluzione temporanea che permetteva di accedere comunque alla propria webmail […]
posted on July 20th, 2007 at 8:40 am
oRi0n
Everything seems ok at the moment.
Thanks for your contribution
posted on July 22nd, 2007 at 1:59 pm
John Roberts
Glad to hear that things are working. We haven’t heard officially one way or the other — but if someone took action silently, we’re grateful for that, too.
Grazi!
posted on July 23rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Marco
Im Italian. And that’s our biggest problem (when we talk about internet). Telecom Italia.
We are forced to rely on their structure because they have the monopoly on so much things (but they say isn’t true) and they provide a so bad service… When we can say they’re just unable to do a good work we are lucky. Someone say they do it on purpose.
Bah.
posted on August 8th, 2007 at 3:19 am
victor
This is a severe problem that Italians are not served efficiently by current DNS infrastructure. This problem must be sort out quickly.
____________________
victor
The VoIP/TDM Routes Marketplace
posted on July 11th, 2008 at 10:26 am