Is RCN Blocking Revver?

I like to use the video sharing site Revver to host the movies I make of life in DC – they share ad revenue and offer a few more options than YouTube.

But recently, I’ve noticed that the Revver URL will not resolve if I try to access it from my home. Also, sites with embedded Revver videos are slow to load as the missing video holds up the browser’s rendering of the web page. At first I thought Revver was down, then I checked my Internet connection.

Revver works fine on my neighbour’s Verizon-provided Internet and other ISPs around DC. Its only RCN accounts that seem to be unable to access Revver.

So is RCN blocking access to Revver? And if so, why?

Calls to RCN tech support go into holding patterns beyond human patience, and end with telling me to restart my router again. Like that does anything.

Married, mortgaged, and soon to be a father, Wayan Vota is in the fast lane to mid-life respectability – until the day his brood finds his intimate journal of global traveling and curses him with the ever-eternal reply “I’m gonna be just like you, Dad!”

8 thoughts on “Is RCN Blocking Revver?

  1. It’s not necessarily that RCN is blocking Revver. It could simply be a routing issue on one of the hops. Most internet traffic takes a half dozen or more hops across multiple vendors’ networks to connect.

    Use a network tool like traceroute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceroute) to figure out where the traffic between you and Revver.com is getting tossed into the void.

    Of course, if this is persisting for days or weeks, then it’s likely a block (or *really* shoddy network management, which is not unheard of).

  2. Suggestion: Change your DNS settings to use OpenDNS. 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 This will help if RCN is simply messing with their name servers.

  3. Greg & Michael,

    Thanks for the tips, I wish I could check RCN with them now, but I’m now on a business trip in Kenya for the next two weeks. I’d love it if another RCN customer could check this out in the mean time

  4. I originally read this at Is the RNC blocking Revver and thought everyone was being a bit paranoid.