Re: [selenium-developers] Google blocks Iranian IP addresses from accessing seleniumhq.org

[Luke Inman-Semerau]

Crazy :(  I have no idea why it would be blocked, unless there's some blessed whitelisting that needs to be done for Iran in particular.

We don't have it hosted anywhere else currently. Although the source is accessible through a github mirror:

https://github.com/seleniumhq/www.seleniumhq.org

can you see that?

If so, you can clone and build / run the website itself (if you get the dependencies listed in the README file).

It always has been disconcerting that countries have blanket firewall rules applied to them.

Maybe a googler can help us understand where the blocking rule is and maybe a process to unblock it.

-Luke

On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 6:48 AM, <smha...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I guessed the Developers Google Group was the most relevant venue to raise this issue, so sorry if this should have been reported elsewhere (in the bug tracker perhaps? But that's also blocked by Google! Google groups is not blocked though).

Until a few days ago, I had no problem accessing the SeleniumHQ website (I have begun to learn and use Selenium since a few weeks ago). But today I found that - apparently after moving to Google hosting - the SeleniumHQ website is no longer available in Iran, being blocked by Google itself, like other third-party websites which are hosted by Google. I have attached a screenshot.

I found that it is still possible to access the website through Google's cache, but that's a bit cumbersome for everyday use. Is there anything the Selenium team can do for Iranian web developers? (and perhaps people of other nationalities which have been blocked by Google) Moving away from Google hosting would be great, but I guess that's too much to ask. Is there a mirror or a downloadable copy of the website (particularly the documentation in HTML format) available?

Thanks,
Mohammad Hossein Ahmadi
Software Developer at Parsian Insurance

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[smha...@gmail.com]

Yes GitHub is accessible. Thanks for that!

I also did a quick search and found that Google App Engine (where seleniumhq.org appears to run on) has blocked Iran, Sudan, Cuba, Syria and North Korea due to U.S. export control laws. Here's a short explanation from a Googler involved with GAE. I wonder why other hosting services have not done so. Perhaps because it is categorized as a "computation service" and not simply a "hosting service"? But as far as I can tell, websites running on Amazon Cloud are not blocked either. Crazy indeed! :|

Thanks by the way for this great tool. Selenium has been a pleasant surprise for me since I discovered it.

--Mohammad

-Luke

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[Patrick Lightbody]

Bummer! Luke - what do you think about trying out Heroku?

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[Željko Filipin]

On Thursday, February 14, 2013 3:48:05 PM UTC+1, smha...@gmail.com wrote:

the SeleniumHQ website is no longer available in Iran

As a quick and temporary workaround, you can use a tool like http://www.tunnelbear.com/

Željko

[Luke Inman-Semerau]

Just wanted to update the thread, that I believe our friends at google have pressed a magic button and now seleniumhq.org is accessible to all countries. Let us know if it is not.

-Luke

--

[Mohammad Hossein Ahmadi]

Yes, I just tried it and I confirm that it is now accessible from Iran! And the interesting bit is that other websites running on GAE are still blocked on Iranian IPs, which means Selenium - which is apparently still hosted on GAE - is being treated as an exception. On behalf of Iranian web developers, a big thank you to Luke and whoever else was involved in this! This will undoubtedly drive wider adoption of Selenium in Iran. I have switched companies since my original posts here, and I was pleased to find out that the folks in my new company have been using Selenium as well. (I also hope people start contributing back)

Željko,
Thanks for the idea, and sorry for being late to answer. Unfortunately, such tools, which allow circumventing internet restrictions, are blocked on the opposite side, i.e. by Iranian internet authorities!

Best regards,
-- Mohammad

[Željko Filipin]

On Thursday, February 28, 2013 12:26:54 PM UTC-8, Mohammad Hossein Ahmadi wrote:

Željko,
Thanks for the idea, and sorry for being late to answer. Unfortunately, such tools, which allow circumventing internet restrictions, are blocked on the opposite side, i.e. by Iranian internet authorities!

Another solution is to open a manual session at https://saucelabs.com. It is fast to set up but slow to use, still better than not being able to access the site at all.

Željko