[Hidden-tech] Cushman wifi mystery

[Alan Frank]

Hidden techies,

I'm planning to go to Cushman this coming Sunday and have three items on 
my agenda regarding this issue:
1: Try accessing my work desktop via the VPN (which I have now 
installed) as a workaround.
2: Get my IP address so I can check with the webmasters at some of the 
affected sites to see if it is blacklisted.
3: Do DNS lookups on a couple of affected sites and see if I get values 
consistent with what I get from home.

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions.

--Alan



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Cushman wifi mystery
Date: 2024-11-08 22:39
 From: Alan Frank <alan at 8wheels.org>
To: Hidden Tech <hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>

Hidden Techers,

I frequently eat lunch at Cushman Market in Amherst.  For many years, I 
had no problems with their wifi.  However, in July, I started getting 
connection errors for most web sites.  For example:

This site can’t be reached
https://www.washingtonpost.com/ is unreachable.
Try running Windows Network Diagnostics.
ERR_ADDRESS_UNREACHABLE

This site can’t be reached
Check if there is a typo in webmail.pair.com.
If spelling is correct, try running Windows Network Diagnostics.
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

I am able to access Facebook, Google, and Youtube, among others.  I 
could watch a video on Youtube, so it's not a bandwidth issue.

I can access https://www.bridgebase.com/, but when I follow the links to 
log in or to access the VuGraph archive on the same site, it fails.  
Perhaps the home page is cached?

Over time, I experienced the same thing on three different Windows 
laptops and on my phone, when connected to the Cushman wifi.  None of 
the devices had any trouble connecting to any of the web sites from home 
or from other public wifi networks.  I also spoke with another Cushman 
customer.  He said that he didn't have any trouble, though when he tried 
then to access washingtonpost.com, he got the same message.  At my 
request, he also tried fidelity.com--another one that is unreachable for 
me--and got a basic HTML page, not the normal rich home page.

I reached out to the owner of Cushman.  She said that she didn't have 
any problems with those sites, that she wasn't intentionally blocking 
any of them, and that she could access them from her device; I'm not 
sure which sites specifically she was able to reach and I don't have 
direct knowledge that she was using the same network.

One idea I had was to tunnel through my work VPN to a remote desktop, 
though at best that will work only until I retire in a few years.  There 
are a couple of ways to do that.  One is through a URL, but of course I 
can't access that.  Another is to use Windows App.  When I tried 
installing it while at Cushman, Microsoft Store said that I wasn't 
connected to the internet, though of course I was--I can navigate the 
store itself just fine.  I installed it later from home and will try it 
out the next time I'm at the cafe, which at this point may not be for a 
while.

I'd appreciate any suggestions for what the owner or I can do to 
investigate or resolve this issue.

--Alan