The days of crappy networks in my college seems to be endless, and it just went crapper than ever. Yesterday I was trying to upload a small image (my current avatar in /g/), using my usual image hosting site, imagehost.org. Oddly enough, this site seems to be blocked with Websense by the network admin, under the category "Personal Network Storage and Backup". I wonder what kind of genius is that, it's far beyond my comprehension.
This Websense filtering has been used before over here, with numerous revisions, but it has never been as nonsensical as this. "Personal Network Storage and Backup" supposedly belongs to file hosting sites such as MediaFire, RapidShare, MegaUpload, DepositFiles, etc. It makes sense if they are trying to improve the Internet surfing experience by not allowing the users to leech large files from these sites, thus saving bandwidth.
But why image hosting sites are blocked as well? Many of us rely on these services to upload and view images all over the Internet. And most of these images doesn't go larger than 100MB, due to the website's restrictions over unregistered/free users. C'mon, do us some justice. There's no good reason why image hosting sites should be blocked.
I tried a number of websites and keywords that I expect to be blocked, the results are pretty much weird. Popular file hosting sites were blocked, as well as popular image hosting sites. XS.TO, which I used to upload the image just now, isn't blocked, probably because its less popular. The keyword "porn" is blocked, under the category "Streaming Media". Keywords like "sex", "nude", "warez", "hentai", etc. haven't been blocked, which is indeed weird. So they're stopping us from downloading stuff, which might be important/legal, but allow us to view porn sites?
I can't get YouTube, Metacafe, or Google Video to load though, so I don't know the results for the time being.
Websense is never a welcome addition to me. It just worsens the Internet experience. Now since file hosting sites are blocked, I can't download regular cool stuffs from there anymore. Just throw the web filtering nonsense away and give us better networks instead. We pay for that.
my campus is also using websense as their internet filter. and hell yea they sux >:D
ReplyDeleteAnd from the CICT news I read a while back, it seems that they're going to be up for YET ANOTHER "NETWORK MAINTENANCE/UPGRADE." STARTING FROM TODAY TILL THE END OF THIS MONTH.
ReplyDeletelet's rage?
Lol... UTM like that wan la... what to do...? If can go to fsksm find PERSAKA... Ask them make complains... if they wan la... I am a former UTM student and the club committee of PERSAKA... Always complain them...
ReplyDeletezarakiken, I'm studying at UTM KL. There isn't any PERSAKA here, only COMSTAR for CS students. And the one we should complain here is CICT instead.
ReplyDeleteLike they really listen anyway.
UiTM also use websense, but UiTM manage the websense more senseful, I think.
ReplyDeleteFacebook can be accessed, yippie XD all streaming site will be blocked until office hour finish or network load didn't exceed certain limit.
But they filter word "games". Gives headache to my game design lecturer XD
At the very least they already lifted that crappy websense filter, only whats left is the crappy wireless network
ReplyDeletemaybe you could set your bandwidth from 20% to 100% and disabling IPv6. Could speedup your internet. But not the connection. But, maybe u've done that. :/
ReplyDeleteWith like hundreds of people surfing (or even leeching) through a single line, I don't think that would help much.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, how do you set bandwidth from 20% to 100%?