Project Euler is now unavailable for Chinese users

[castrate]

The latest news said Project Euler moved to new server by Friday evening(Central European time). However, up to now the website is still unavailable to Chinese users. I believe the moving work is completed by talking with friends from other countries.

Now the alternative site projecteuler.info and this forum site are available for Chinese users, but I can't get access to the main site without VPN or other tools. This brings a lot of inconvenience. I have written some code returning correct answers to several problems these days, but have nowhere to submit.

Please take a look at this problem, thank you.

[int256]

The latest news said Project Euler moved to new server by Friday evening(Central European time). However, up to now the website is still unavailable to Chinese users. I believe the moving work is completed by talking with friends from other countries.

Now the alternative site projecteuler.info and this forum site are available for Chinese users, but I can't get access to the main site without VPN or other tools. This brings a lot of inconvenience. I have written some code returning correct answers to several problems these days, but have nowhere to submit.

Please take a look at this problem, thank you.

I'm Chinese too. In my opinion, i think it's not convenient too, e.g we can't use the profile picture and sth. more.
But the most thing we use PE is solve math&IT problem . We already have our Chinese site(https://pe-cn.github.io/), we can use it until they fix it.
And you can try to use VPN to go to the mainsite, like iK3u.
And you can solve problem on some other website like https://noip.kwboy.com/mathe .

[hk]

Perhaps you can install the Opera browser, it has a free VPN.
Anyhow, Project Euler can do nothing 'To fix it" . Probably your government is blocking the site,
That's not an uncommon thing for them to do.

[euler]

Hi, castrate and int256. I am sorry to hear that you have been having problems connecting to the new server. I can only imagine that your local DNS has not updated for some reason. I have been regularly checking DNS updates throughout the world since Friday using as many tools as possible. As far as I can establish I was under the impression that the new records had propagated successfully worldwide for the past 24 hours.

For example,
https://dnschecker.org/#A/projecteuler.net

This reports that Xinfeng in China has the correct IP address for the main website.

As hk explained, this is out of our hands. You will either just have to wait patiently until your local DNS server caches the correct records or use a VPN that can connect to another location and use their DNS records.

[bukebuer]

Hi, castrate and int256. I am sorry to hear that you have been having problems connecting to the new server. I can only imagine that your local DNS has not updated for some reason. I have been regularly checking DNS updates throughout the world since Friday using as many tools as possible. As far as I can establish I was under the impression that the new records had propagated successfully worldwide for the past 24 hours.

For example,
https://dnschecker.org/#A/projecteuler.net

This reports that Xinfeng in China has the correct IP address for the main website.

As hk explained, this is out of our hands. You will either just have to wait patiently until your local DNS server caches the correct records or use a VPN that can connect to another location and use their DNS records.

Hi, I did some test and it doesn't seem like the server is unavailable but a server-level config problem.

The error code is 403, "Request forbidden by administrative rules". I don't know any internet thing so I googled a little bit. It suggests a check at ip management strategy server end.

Don't know whether it's correct. Hope it helps. Would you mind a little more debug?

[aleksey]

Same problem from Crimea. Looks like DNS resolving is blocked by stackdns.com. If I add projecteuler.net in /etc/hosts, then it works fine.

[euler]

I'm not sure if I'm understanding the problem.

Our primary name server is ns1.stackdns.com and the A record should resolve to the IP address 185.151.30.128. Are you saying that your local DNS server do not have the correct DNS records or are you saying that our server is actively blocking your IP block?

[aleksey]

I'm not sure if I'm understanding the problem.

Our primary name server is ns1.stackdns.com and the A record should resolve to the IP address 185.151.30.128. Are you saying that your local DNS server do not have the correct DNS records or are you saying that our server is actively blocking your IP block?

ns1.stackdns.com is 35.197.225.59. If I try

Code: Select all

dig @35.197.225.59 projecteuler.net

from my home in Crimea, I get no response back. But if I do that from a server in Moscow, then it correctly returns

Code: Select all

projecteuler.net.       3600    IN      A       185.151.30.128

ns1.stackdns.com is in Google Cloud, and it blocks access for regions under US sanctions. Some Google services return 403, but this one drops packets.

[euler]

Thank you for the information. I am guessing that there is nothing that we or our hosts can do about it currently?

In which case, is there some practical advice you could offer as a workaround to other members affected by this who might not be as technically minded as you?

[aleksey]

Thank you for the information. I am guessing that there is nothing that we or our hosts can do about it currently?

Is using another DNS service an option? The one you were using before worked for everyone.

In which case, is there some practical advice you could offer as a workaround to other members affected by this who might not be as technically minded as you?

Adding these two lines to /etc/hosts solves the problem for me:

Code: Select all

185.151.30.128 projecteuler.net
185.151.30.177 projecteuler.chat

I guess the same should work in Windows.

UPD: Another option is to use a public DNS service like 8.8.8.8.

[KeyserSoze12]

I have a very similar problem (403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules.) since Project Euler has moved to new server. I can still access it through Tor (like I'm doing now) and my mobile phone. I have been waiting if something would eventually change, but so far no luck. I don't live in a "suspicious" country (China, Russia, North Korea, ...) and I use Chrome updated to newest version on Windows 10 (so no legacy software or something like that). I've tried with different DNS server, cleared browser cache, used different computer, different browser and so on. I can contact my ISP, if you think that would help, but if it's not a DNS problem, ...

[euler]

If you would like me to, send me a PM with your IP address and I could ask our hosts if they know why your IP address is not able to access the servers.