Brits in Crete Forum | OTEnet.gr Accessing Again

This is the promised longer response with explanation as to why BiC Forum was not accessible from Greece via OTEnet for nearly two weeks.


So far so good. The BritsinCrete Community Forum is fully accessible from Greece.


After numerous complaints not only from me but also other BiC members, the problem for the BiC Forum was sorted by NOC at OTE Technical Support on July 29 some time before 1144am. Eleni our BiC Forum moderator was one of the first to get back online onto the forum. This is curious as at time of writing, I have not been sent an all-clear e-mail from OTE, as was promised by their customer support team.


I have reviewed the various comments made in our Forum about giving more detailed advice on how to get around the access problem. I noted someone suggested changing DNS in their settings. I have a word of caution.


In my experience in nearly two years of BiC, the computer knowledge of users is at many levels of expertise. Unless you know what you are doing, please do not follow blindly such advice. You never know people's motives. That is the reason I explained only how to find proxy servers through Google Search as one simple and temporary solution.


In hindsight, I am surprised the OTEnet fiasco was solved as quickly as it was. Was it because of the number of complaints from BiC users? Was it because I was in touch with OTEnet customer service on a numerous occasions to push the case. Was it because I suggested to them that they may be in breach of EU regulations in the free flow of goods and services within the EU (they seemingly were agreeing to routing bandwidth usage from Greece to the BiC Forum in the UK via servers outside the EU?) It may have been a combination of these factors and more. But the error was for the OTE management to correct, which they have done.


Oh, yes what was the problem? I can only summize that it was down to "Time Out" delays or other malfunction at external servers caused a break in the chain of links between a user in Greece (including me) and our servers in UK.


It is interesting to note, forums generally can eat up a lot of bandwidth and ISP's try to spread the load around the Internet network. I believe this is in an effort to limit costs and promote efficiency. Let me be clear that I am not stating these are the reasons in this particular case.

Two weeks without access to the forum was bad for members and regular users. How can we complain and get some kind of redress?


I have been advised by OTE if you are an OTEnet.gr customer you can "complain". The form is that you state the problem and ask for some kind of compensation - such as extended service by two weeks at no further cost (my words).

The way it is done is to hand in a written claim at your local OTE office or shop and it will be passed to the "Complaints" Section. (the evidence is stated in the earlier blog with the tracer results provided by traceroute.org). Anyway, OTE's own internal technical support department has the information well documented from my user account and reference to the britsincrete.co.uk name.


Let me wrap this up by saying that in all the years of accessing the Internet this is the first time this DNS website access problem to a respectable website such as BritsinCrete - has happened to me personally. Thank you OTEnet.gr .

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Traceroute Proves OTEnet Hiccup for BritsinCrete.Co.Uk

The traceroute showing the Internet routing to BritsinCrete Forum is back to normal for OTEnet.gr subscribers in Greece. That means the website is fully operational again.

The background to the Internet Failure:

For almost 2 weeks from July 16, 2008, the management of OTE - the national telecoms company in Greece was in effect blocking access to a number of websites in the UK including BritsinCrete's Community Forum.


For the record, here is the routing and the time in milli-seconds taken at each server during the "downtime" of the blocked OTEnet access to connect to www.britsincrete.co.uk:


1. warp-srv (147.102.222.200) 0.332 ms 0.307 ms 0.207 ms

2. backboneRouter.ntua.ilissos.athensMAN.grnet.gr (195.251.24.70) 0.554 ms 0.314 ms 0.215 ms

3. athens3-to-ilissos1.backbone.grnet.gr (195.251.27.117) 0.700 ms 0.694 ms 0.717 ms

4. grnet.rt1.ath.gr.geant2.net (62.40.124.89) 0.950 ms 0.961 ms 54.485 ms

5. 62.40.112.178 (62.40.112.178) 32.276 ms 32.133 ms 32.187 ms

6. mno-b1-link.telia.net (213.248.97.101) 32.276 ms 32.290 ms 32.194 ms

7. prs-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.250.177) 50.519 ms 50.675 ms 50.559 ms

8. ldn-bb1-pos7-2-0.telia.net (213.248.64.10) 57.884 ms 57.939 ms 57.902 ms

9. ldn-b1-link.telia.net (80.91.248.89) 58.030 ms 57.898 ms 57.915 ms

10. ldn-tch-i1-link.telia.net (80.91.250.210) 58.298 ms 58.109 ms 58.300 ms

11. legend-108411-ldn-tch-i1.c.telia.net (213.248.100.190) 58.257 ms 58.045 ms 58.184 ms

12. 900.gi0-0.rtr2.iph.lon.as5587.net (213.253.141.26) 58.798 ms 59.013 ms 59.559 ms

13. sw1.f1c11.iph.lon.as5587.net (195.13.89.65) 60.780 ms 60.789 ms 60.183 ms

14. steel-44981-001.dsvr.co.uk (212.69.203.35) 59.638 ms 59.045 ms 59.314 ms


If ever you wish to track the Internet routing to connect to any website in the world, I recommend you choose http://www.traceroute.org. Then click on the country in which your Internet Service Provider is located and choose one of the highlighted organizations.


For the selected location country of Greece, the information on the Internet routing from anyone on OTEnet's network to the BritsinCrete Forum was provided by the National Technical University of Athens, whose website is at www.ntu.gr .

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