Recently, in the last year or so, I have noticed that it seems more and more difficult to reach certain kinds of sites, especially those in non-favored nations like Iran or Russia.
For example, just now I tried to reach the web site of the Russian Ministry of Defense (http://eng.mil.ru/en/index.htm), a site that I have legitimate business-related reasons for visiting, and it timed out. I tried the same site via a European proxy and had no problem connecting. I then tried a tracert and this was the result:
My interpretation of this is that the IP is being blocked by the company firewall. I asked our IT department what is the IP blocking policy for the network and was told that the policy is not determined by our company, but by the firewall service provider and that it is "secret and proprietary" to the provider and that they (meaning IT) had no control over that policy.
What is the story here? Are firewall product vendors just blanket blocking entire countries?
Just for giggles I decided to try different countries to see what would happen:
Finland ok
Poland ok
Russia blocked
Ukraine blocked
Estonia blocked
Turkey blocked
Saudi Arabia blocked
Afghanistan ok
Iraq blocked
Georgia ok
Armenia blocked
Uzbekistan ok
Alright, so I can visit web sites in Uzbekistan and Georgia, but not those in Armenia or the Ukraine? Who is making up this logic?