Totally OT BBC PC rant.

[dennis]

It doesn't even mean they go to the same address. I can ping the addresses and they are different. I think TNP is spending too much time with TMH.

[Bob Eager]

But it's the same for an awful lot of countries...not just the UK, as the BBC implied. Others that come to mind are Tuvalu (.tv, Christmas Island (.cx), to mention but two. And anyone can get what I consider USA domains (.com, .org etc.) even if others may consider them 'global'.

[Bob Eager]

I'm looking at the DNS records, Dennis. No 'appears' about it.

If I do that, I get the second address both times. If I look at the authoritative BBC DNS servers, I get the first address. Looks as if they've moved the IP address and there are stale addresses around.

[dennis]

It doesn't matter anyway as even if the domain points to the same address it doesn't follow that the web server treats them the same.

[Bob Eager]

Wriggling again, dennis. That is not the issue you originally put forward, although it is a valid comment.

[Dave Liquorice]

So do it but I have a transparent caching DNS between me and the net. You may well have one in your ISP and not know it.

Curiously

doesn't come back with an answer from ns0.thdo.bbc.co.uk or ns0.rbsov.bbc.co.uk. ICBA to dig any deeper for authrative BBC DNSs.

Maybe or perhaps there is a "round robin" in the DNS to spread the load across the network/gateways/servers.

But it still doesn't matter what name/IP/server you end up at. The server can still serve different content depending on where it thinks you are in the world based on your (apparent) IP.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Er dave, me old fruit. That is exactly the point. The fact that

and and are in fact all aliases means that whatever country specific stuff is done, is, and can be, NOTHING to do with the *domain names* actually used.

Nor is it a redirect.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I understand why they do it that way and frankly I agree.

There are many cases where a .co.uk is a reasonable thing even with no UK status.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Wrong again $ ping

PING (212.58.253.67) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from www-vip.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.253.67): icmp_seq=1 ttl=120 time=15.5 ms 64 bytes from www-vip.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.253.67): icmp_seq=2 ttl=120 time=15.3 ms 64 bytes from www-vip.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.253.67): icmp_seq=3 ttl=120 time=15.6 ms 64 bytes from www-vip.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.253.67): icmp_seq=4 ttl=120 time=15.8 ms ^C

---

ping statistics ---

4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3008ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 15.316/15.569/15.803/0.174 ms $ ping PING (212.58.253.67) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from www-vip.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.253.67): icmp_seq=1 ttl=120 time=14.9 ms 64 bytes from www-vip.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.253.67): icmp_seq=2 ttl=120 time=16.4 ms 64 bytes from www-vip.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.253.67): icmp_seq=3 ttl=120 time=15.3 ms 64 bytes from www-vip.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.253.67): icmp_seq=4 ttl=120 time=16.1 ms

The beeb has some 'interesting' IP technology

There are more than one server or at least more than one interfaces on their servers. Plus some different boxes their stuff goes through.

If you do traceroutes or ping test from outside the UK, BOTH domains get vectored to a different server. But that has nothing to do with the

*name used*. Otherwise it would be trivial for someone outside the UK to get through to UK content.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That may be so. In fact it isn't so, but it doesnt validate your original contention that the different names take you to different servers. They don't.

Something a whole lot smarter at the IP routing level does that.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is completely true,but is NOT what Dennis said.

In fact the more I probe the beebs DNS and IP strategy the weirder it gets

Certainly the DNS is returning many different addresses depending on when you look up.

Also, I suspect the beebs DNS servers return different IP addresses depending on where the query is coming from, so if you use a 'foreign' DNS server, you might get a 'foreign' server.

The only conclusive thing is the actual *name* is NOT used to differentiate between UK and non UK content.

I managed to get iplayer to NOT work by using the ip address of the 'foreign' server.

I wonder if US based readers can get UK content by using the actual IP address of the UK facing server..

[The Natural Philosopher]

They do.

At any given time.

What is more interesting, is that they *both* return a different address when queried from outside the UK..

Never mind Dennis. Its all too much for you.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I didn't spend 10 years of my life setting up routers and DNS servers to be wrong here Dennis.

[Dave Liquorice]

Not if the BBC is doing it's rights protection properly and as that is where big bucks can be involved I expect they are. I know non-UK people that have to use a UK based proxy(*) to get access to UK content though.

(*) Or at least one that the BBC thinks is UK based...

[Bob Eager]

I haven't, I'm sure...not what my ISP doesn, and it's my own DNS servers too.

Perhaps.

I agree. But that wasn't what dennis said.

[dennis]

If you want to be bloody pedantic then maybe you should actually read what I said in the first place

"It detects you are in the uk and sends (spelling corrected) you there. If it didn't detect that you are in the uk some services would be restricted."

Your quote about IP address is not the issue I originally put so that makes you guilty.

Nowhere does it say the IP addresses are the same or different even though they were at the time I checked.

If you try building a data center (which I have) you will konw that there are lots of ways to be returned different pages depending on the location specified in the URL.

Just remember the bbc data center almost certainly has inverse caches at the entry point, some main servers running php stuff and backend database servers supplying the text and images on the public side. You can redirect the content at either the cache or at the main servers with ease.

The caches will probably share the one IP address and map it to an internal address depending on load and what the contents of the url are and maybe the source IP address and browser type (if there are a lot of visitors you may as well sort out these issues once rather than each time a user clicks on a new page).

Don't fall into the same mode as TMH and co, read the damn message.

[dennis]

My original statement didn't say it did, but you are TMH and can't read.

I am surprised you know that.

[Bob Eager]

How confused you are....anything to justify your original erroneous comments.

You'll be saying you've worked as a brain surgeon next.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes you did say that.

Why?

[dennis]

Where did I say that?

You are replying to "It detects you are in the uk and sends (spelling corrected) you there. If it didn't detect that you are in the uk some services would be restricted."

You are TMH, and can't read.

Because you can't read!