Hacker News Reader

Comment by whitepoplar | Hacker News Reader

Ugh, why can't 1.1.1.1 resolve archive.is?

Because archive.is uses DNS load balancing based on EDNS information which includes a user's IP address, and returns invalid results if that information is not present, while cloudflare's DNS hides EDNS information out of respect for the user's privacy.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317

Notably they return invalid results for queries without EDNS information from only Cloudflare.

Is Cloudflare's implementation somehow different, or is it an explicit blacklist of some kind?

They blacklist Cloudflare for petty reasons

Alternatively, nextdns.io can anonymise the EDNS client subnet so you can browse sites like archive.is without giving out a real ip address.

Perhaps cloudflare could do something similar.

It seems silly to give out fake information to work around a stubborn site with a vendetta. I think it makes sense to provide a distinction between no information and information instead of providing incorrect information.

Can’t they just send phony information that indicates the region the resolver is in?

1.1.1.1 doesn't provide EDNS information, and the archive.is admin has decided that dealing with dns queries without this field is difficult/annoying and simply returns an invalid result.

That's not accurate, they use the information to combat abuse.

EDIT: Why the downvotes?

Do you have a pointer to how they use it to combat abuse? All I've ever read from the archive.is people is that they use EDNS to return geographically-close machines.

Regardless, it's a PITA and I've been avoiding archive.is links for a while now because of it.

I'm not sure I should say, but there are people who use legal means to take down their own material and cause trouble to archive.is. The DNS thing is to avoid leaking the servers' location, roughly.

To offer an honest answer to an honest question:

Coming to this a couple of hours later I don't perceive what you're saying to be any different to the parent. 'Difficult/annoying to deal with' could easily match 'used to combat abuse'. An assume-good-faith reading of both of these looks the same to me. I'd guess you were downvoted for the "That's not accurate" bit.

I think this is more of a “yes and”, and you could have brought it up that way rather than as a “No”.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com