Appengine's Turkey problem

[Kaan Soral]

It took me a long time to figure out that the reason of my domain
name(www.something.com) on Appengine not working is that Youtube IP's
are banned in Turkey.

So when i ping my domain, It can't reach ghs.l.google.com

Should Google use seperate IP's for domain related things or should we
forget about Turkey if we use Appengine?

[Will]

There is a China problem, too. Same goes in China, if it is not more severe.

I recently implemented a reverse proxy, fixed the problem. Perhaps you can do the same.

Good luck,

Will

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[Kaan Soral]

Thanks for the idea,

So do you have a reverse proxy server that acts for every request and
redirects them to appengine and return the result to the requester?
If that is the case, for high amount of requests there can be problems
right?

I would be glad if you can give more details,
Thanks again,
Kaan

On Dec 15, 7:44 am, Will <vocalster....@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is a China problem, too. Same goes in China, if it is not more severe.
>
> I recently implemented a reverse proxy, fixed the problem. Perhaps you can
> do the same.
>
> Good luck,
>
> Will
>

> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Kaan Soral <kaanso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > It took me a long time to figure out that the reason of my domain
> > name(www.something.com) on Appengine not working is that Youtube IP's
> > are banned in Turkey.
>
> > So when i ping my domain, It can't reach ghs.l.google.com
>
> > Should Google use seperate IP's for domain related things or should we
> > forget about Turkey if we use Appengine?
>
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Google App Engine" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to google-a...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > google-appengi...@googlegroups.com<google-appengine%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
> > .

[Kaan Soral]

Shouldn't someone solve this problem?

[Tim Hoffman]

Hi

I don't really believe it is solvable by google.

If they add a new pool of addresses for appengine, and some apps turn up on appengine that 

any particular government doesn't like, they will block access to that range and you are

back in the same situation.

All anyone can do is educate and lobby their government.

Rgds

Tim Hoffman

[Kaan Soral]

Actually Turkey doesn't block google, they block Youtube IP's, so the
problem is probebly caused by shared IP's.

So in my opinion the problem can be solved if Google uses seperate
IP's for components.

And for government blocking, they normally block domain names rather
than IP's but for some reason they only block Youtube IP's because
people just enter the site using seperate DNS etc.

[Robert Kluin]

So what happens when they find an app hosted on App Engine they don't
like and block that?

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[Ufuk Kayserilioglu]

Robert,

You are right, and that is exactly the reason why GAE is blocked right now. I am afraid Kaan is a little behind the times with the YouTube ban, which has since been lifted. The most recent ban, that also affects one of the IP addresses that ghs.google.com resolves to, is related to a copyright violation by a site running on GAE or Blogger. For people who are interested (and can read Turkish), you can find a copy of the court order here: http://imgur.com/gYzPl.jpg . The IP address 74.125.43.121 is clearly visible.

Kaan, 

Turkish authorities have reverted to blocking IP address for good now. I don't think they will change that soon, since they have seen DNS blocking does not work as they want (too easy to circumvent). About your reachability problem, I am afraid there is hardly anything Google can do about it. I know it is frustrating (I have an app or two on GAE as well) but as others have said there are ways around it:

1. You can go the reverse proxy route. Others have suggested (I am afraid I don't remember who) on this very mailing list, to use a small Linux VPS instance on RackSpace to setup a reverse proxy for your site. It seems the ping times from there to GAE are very low and the cost is only around $10 a month. I already had some Windows services hosted on an EC2 instance on AWS and set up ARR on the IIS7 server to do the reverse proxy in about 10 minutes, and haven't looked back.
2. I came upon an alternative just the other day. It appears that if you set your DNS records to point to one of alternate the IP addresses ofghs.google.com, you won't have any problems. (source: http://www.burcakcubukcu.com/2010/12/bloggerda-bulunan-alan-adl-siteme.html) Now, I haven't tried this myself, but I presume it would work for GAE as well. I suggest you setup an A record for yourself such as "redirect.example.com" with the IP address contained in the linked article and CNAME you primary site (let's say "www.example.com" to "redirect.example.com"). If, and, hopefully, when, the ban is lifted, you can change the "redirect.example.com" from an A record to a CNAME record that points to "ghs.google.com" and you will be all set. YMMV, though.

Best,

Ufuk

[Kaan Soral]

Thanks for the help, it solves the problem

On Dec 19 2010, 1:49 am, Ufuk Kayserilioglu <paracy...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Robert,
>
> You are right, and that is exactly the reason why GAE is blocked right now.
> I am afraid Kaan is a little behind the times with the YouTube ban, which
> has since been lifted. The most recent ban, that also affects one of the IP
> addresses that ghs.google.com resolves to, is related to a copyright
> violation by a site running on GAE or Blogger. For people who are interested

> (and can read Turkish), you can find a copy of the court order here:http://imgur.com/gYzPl.jpg. The IP address 74.125.43.121 is clearly

> visible.
>
> Kaan,
>
> Turkish authorities have reverted to blocking IP address for good now. I
> don't think they will change that soon, since they have seen DNS blocking
> does not work as they want (too easy to circumvent). About your reachability
> problem, I am afraid there is hardly anything Google can do about it. I know
> it is frustrating (I have an app or two on GAE as well) but as others have
> said there are ways around it:
>

>    1. You can go the reverse proxy route. Others have suggested (I am afraid

>    I don't remember who) on this very mailing list, to use a small Linux VPS
>    instance on RackSpace to setup a reverse proxy for your site. It seems the
>    ping times from there to GAE are very low and the cost is only around $10 a
>    month. I already had some Windows services hosted on an EC2 instance on AWS
>    and set up ARR on the IIS7 server to do the reverse proxy in about 10
>    minutes, and haven't looked back.

>    2. I came upon an alternative just the other day. It appears that if you

>    set your DNS records to point to one of alternate the IP addresses of
>    ghs.google.com, you won't have any problems. (source:

>    http://www.burcakcubukcu.com/2010/12/bloggerda-bulunan-alan-adl-sitem...)

>    Now, I haven't tried this myself, but I presume it would work for GAE as
>    well. I suggest you setup an A record for yourself such as "
>    redirect.example.com" with the IP address contained in the linked article
>    and CNAME you primary site (let's say "www.example.com" to "
>    redirect.example.com"). If, and, hopefully, when, the ban is lifted, you
>    can change the "redirect.example.com" from an A record to a CNAME record
>    that points to "ghs.google.com" and you will be all set. YMMV, though.
>
> Best,
>
> Ufuk
>

> On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 12:20 AM, Robert Kluin <robert.kl...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > So what happens when they find an app hosted on App Engine they don't
> > like and block that?
>

> > google-appengi...@googlegroups.com<google-appengine%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
> > .

> > > For more options, visit this group at
> >http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
>
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Google App Engine" group.
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> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

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> > .

[Albert]

Hi Kaan!

I'd like to know which solution solved your problem. Solution 1 (The
reverse proxy) or solution 2 (The A record/CNAME combination)? Thanks!

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> > > .
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>
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[Kaan Soral]

Hello Albert

Solution 2 solved my problem but it is temporary, the replacement ip's
also get banned after some time ..., so one should always look out for
ip bans and find new ips to use