Virgin default DNS blocking domain with certain keyword

[alexcroox]

I'm building a new website for a client: https://pawpaddock.co.uk

Their website is completely unaccessible from Virgin broadband when using Virgin's DNS. It works immediately if you switch to Google's DNS or a mobile network.

It feels like there is a keyword blacklist on Virgin's DNS resolvers because any combination of those works in other TLDs/hostnames also fail to resolve:

https://pawpaddock.co.uk

https://pawpaddock.uk

https://pawpaddock-uploads-development.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/

Anything that has "pawpaddock" in the hostname fails to resolve to a server. Switching to Google or Cloudflare's DNS (1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8) or any mobile network, it works fine. All of our Virgin Media customers are experiencing this. It's not local to my network or setup.

Who do I contact to resolve this?

[alexcroox]

The odd thing above is I'm using 1.1.1.1 as my DNS server during the above tests. Chrome can load the site but nslookup times out. Chrome and my terminal be using different methods of resolving DNS

[Client62]

Some DNS timeouts have been seen where Hub 5s have intercepted the DNS request.

Using Chrome try a dns leak test to see what it is up to.   A Standard Test will be fine.
Chrome has security settings that allow use of an encrypted DNS of your choice.

1.1.1.1 that is Cloudflare's public DNS
Retry that lookup here : https://www.nslookup.io/   and dev.pawpaddock.uk   it resolves for Cloudflare.

Here using a terminal :

[alexcroox]

Useful site. Here is the local DNS server I'm using with VM default DNS. Maybe you could try a lookup against that DNS server from your end see if you can replicate?

cosh-dnscache-1a.server.virginmedia.net.

[Client62]

For me the VM DNS cache is cache1.service.virginmedia.net

All DNS requests timed out using cosh-dnscache-1a.server.virginmedia.net or its xxx xxx xxx 246 public IP.

nslookup   hp.com    cosh-dnscache-1a.server.virginmedia.net    ( times out )

nslookup  dev.pawpaddock.uk    cosh-dnscache-1a.server.virginmedia.net    ( times out )

[Client62]

nslookup hp.com cosh-dnscache-1a.server.virginmedia.net    ( this does not look to be a valid DNS for nslookup )

From a leak test our DNS cache is shown as nrth-dnscache-1b.server.virginmedia.net  I can not use that as a DNS it always times out.

[alexcroox]

Ah OK that's a red herring then

[Roger_Gooner]

The dev subdomain is a problem.

C:\>nslookup dev.pawpaddock.co.uk 194.168.4.100
Server:  cache1.service.virginmedia.net
Address:  194.168.4.100

Name:    dev.pawpaddock.co.uk

C:\>tracert dev.pawpaddock.co.uk
Unable to resolve target system name dev.pawpaddock.co.uk.

C:\>tracert pawpaddock.co.uk

Tracing route to pawpaddock.co.uk [92.204.221.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3    18 ms    10 ms     8 ms  haye-core-2a-ae36-0.network.virginmedia.net [80.3.178.217]
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  5    10 ms    10 ms    24 ms  host-62-254-42.174.not-set-yet.virginmedia.net.42.254.62.in-addr.arpa [62.254.42.174]
  6    10 ms    10 ms     9 ms  213.46.174.118
  7    10 ms    10 ms     9 ms  ldn-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.122.188]
  8    25 ms    17 ms    16 ms  prs-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.135.25]
  9    25 ms    25 ms    33 ms  ffm-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.123.12]
 10    23 ms    25 ms    24 ms  ffm-b1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.121.1]
 11    41 ms    32 ms    33 ms  ae2.cr-nunki.sxb1.bb.godaddy.com [62.115.144.9]
 12    34 ms    32 ms    32 ms  ae30.sxb1-cr-nunki.bb.gdinf.net [87.230.112.15]
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19    34 ms    36 ms    41 ms  11.221.204.92.host.secureserver.net [92.204.221.11]

Trace complete.

[alexcroox]

It's dev.pawpaddock.uk (note the lack of .co)

The 3 to try are:

dev.pawpaddock.uk
pawpaddock-uploads-development.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com
pawpaddock.co.uk

The AWS S3 one is the most suprising one to be blocked for me, which is why I suspect some form of keyword blacklisting. 

[paul0363]

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@alexcroox wrote:

The AWS S3 one is the most surprising one to be blocked for me, which is why I suspect some form of keyword blacklisting. 

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That one's not blocked here either so looking increasingly like a local issue