No internet for Nyepi

spicyayam

It seems like we won't have access to internet this year. I was hoping the government would make an exception so we can keep in contact easily with our families and so forth.

spicyayam

Interesting. So maybe a vpn would work? That would be interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I never thought of trying that :) In previous years it worked for a bit in the morning and then went off in the afternoon. Like others globally, it would be nice to still be able to communicate with family. Internet has now become a utility, many devices need internet to run these days. I support Nyepi, I just don't believe they should "turn off" the internet.

Mark

britoo, many thanks for the info. Last year I tried my paid VPN service (expressvpn) to access the internet during Nyepi and it didn't work. This year I will also switch to an open DNS provider and see if that helps. One question though. I don't have a dedicated wifi provider am creating a wireless network with my mobile using its 4G. Would I need to change any settings on the phone itself, eg using VPN or changing DNS on the phone, in order for my local network to work during Nyepi?

harryopal

My wife tells me that the Governor of Bali has said the internet will be available through Nyepi because of the virus and perhaps people needing assistance.

Mark

harryopal wrote My wife tells me that the Governor of Bali has said the internet will be available through Nyepi because of the virus and perhaps people needing assistance.

This has been the story going around for a few days, but it has been clarified that the internet will remain available only for hospitals and emergency services. People needing assistance will still have to contact the kepala banjar for permission to move/help by phone, text or in person. A bit disappointing really, given the national emergency..

Mark

Thanks very much britoo. I have connected my mobile to the VPN and will ensure that it doesn't disconnect before tomorrow morning. The problem I'm having now is connecting my computer to the VPN on the network created by my phone. Interestingly, I can connect the computer to the VPN using my wife's mobile network (she's not on VPN). So, the problem seems to be my computer can't use VPN when connected to a network (my phone) which is also running a VPN. Giving me a headache already so we'll see tomorrow... Hopefully at the least I'll have internet access with my phone.

britoo

spicyayam wrote It seems like we won't have access to internet this year. I was hoping the government would make an exception so we can keep in contact easily with our families and so forth.

Spicy I appreciate depending on your background this reply might be every bit as useful to you as a lead balloon. In my experience over the past few years they don't actually switch off anything, or at least my ISP didn't and I am fairly certain most won't either as it would be too disruptive to everyday life. I believe many essential services who would have previously built out their own physical networks now operate using a virtual network piggy backing on the public internet as its way cheaper. Switching off the Internet isnt really an option these days. What they actually do is a combination of dns hikacking and dns poisoning to ensure that all normal requests for internet connections which go via a process called dns are captured, in case you use someone else's name server, and redirected to the ISPs splash page or to a serverless machine for other services. Basically they replace their copy of the internet's phone book with a fake one containing only one number, so all requests go nowhere for the duration of the blackout. So in my experience if your internet is already running via a pre established vpn connection through which all your dns requests are routed, the internet will function entirely as normal throughout the blackout. At least this is how it's panned out for me over the past few years. . . . I did say as useful as a lead balloon :)

britoo

Spicy I think the trick is to have the by-pass technique, in this case the VPN in place before the embargo and to ensure that the device you are using doesn't hibernate, sleep or rest its network throughout the day. My VPN gateway runs on a little server and serves multiple devices on my network. It is always-on and being a server doesn't fall asleep or retire the network connection periodically. Mark I use NordVPN but from what I have read expressVPN is equivalent and having had a bit of time on my hands I tested if I could make a new VPN connection directly from my laptop last Nyepi while my little VPN server was happily connecting. It failed just like you said your attempt did. I believe the problem is that the VPN app first tries to reach your providers VPN server via a dns request made to your ISP. The poisoned reply gives a fake address with no server so the VPN app fails. Conversely the VPN connection on my little server just kept chugging along as it had already made the connection to its server side. Spicy what you describe as a gradual decline in usability till noon followed by failure or I guess a helpful splash page being displayed no matter what is consistent with my experience. The name lookup process starts on your device and accesses a hierarchy of more authoritative servers according to certain rules. These name servers also cache commonly used addresses so in the morning your local device won't drink the poison form your ISPs name server until it decides its local cache is stale so many commonly used service will work for a while and then progressively fail. Mark you are right in that this isn't really about having a VPN. Its about avoiding your ISPs name servers but also avoiding their ability to hack and hijack your internet traffic. The VPN does this by entirely obfuscating all dns requests within the encrypted VPN stream where your ISP cannot see them or touch them. The VPN approach assumes you use the VPN providers name servers and automatically tunnel the name requests through the VPN which most should do. I suspect just using opendns servers won't be enough as your ISP will hijack your dns requests and force them onto its own servers thereby poisoning them. I haven't tried this but if your alternate dns provider lets you obfuscate the dns request by routing it on a different port (normally port 53 for dns so not 53) you might find the cost conscious ISP has assumed hijacking port 53 is sufficient and everything will work fine for you even without a VPN. Spicy if you have a router that supports full VPN and not just VPN passthrough thats the way to go. If not switching off all the power saving and hibernate stuff on you computer and even better wiring it to your router and sharing your internet connection (kind of making it a hotspot) should force it to act as a kind of server. Theres often an optional tick box to force all traffic though the vpn which is what you want. Of course also check you are now using your VPNs name servers.

Markit

It works! Huraaaa! No end to the bad news this year...

SamD

No change to my internet connection for Nyepi. Everything worked as normal. I am using GlobalXtreme.

britoo

Mark, phones are more tricky as they are forever switching things off to conserve battery power and you risk that our connections will be severed and you won't be able to re-establish it during the blackout. You would want to disable a much of the power saving stuff a you can. A good VPN app ought to automatically change your name servers though you may need to tick a box saying something like run all traffic through the VPN for it to do so. You can check really easily by checking on http://dnsleaktest.com. It should be quickly obvious if you are still using your Indonesian ISPs name servers. If it turns out you are still showing your ISPs settings then you may be able to manually override in advanced settings and potentially try changing the port too if your opendns provider supports this.

Mark

I use my mobile's 4G to create a local network, which did not work out well. 4G was completely switched off yesterday.

hadodi

Indi home was dead yesterday. I do not like religions put pressure on human. Especially in crisis times like this!

Mark

Markit wrote It works! Huraaaa! No end to the bad news this year...

Markit, what internet provider do you use?

JohnnyCool

This is all history now, at least for another 210 days (next "year's" Nyepi. I got up at 4am ([I]afte[/I]r midnight [I]before[/I] Nyepi Day), turned on a PC, laptop, and smartphone, connected my VPN to three of its servers (Singapore, Malaysia, Japan), and left it on. Later on, no connection to any of them. On one of my wife's smartphones (without VPN), she could connect briefly, (a few minutes), until she couldn't (using Telkomsel). Unsure if this is related or not, but I wonder about the modems that companies "give" us when we sign up. Take IndiHome, for example. [B][I]Is[/I][/B] the modem they provide a cheap and nasty affair, that gradually decreases in "performance" over time, to get people to upgrade to a more expensive service "package"? If you upgrade, do you get a "better" modem? How about buying your own 3rd party high performance modem? [I]Might[/I] be better, if you can configure it when you take out the one given to you to access whatever ISP you were using. Then there's the package you [I]already[/I] have, probably has things like TV/Video stuff to connect directly to your TV via a HDMI cable. On a lighter note, one of my best laughs so far this week was a person who asked something like: "If I have good anti-virus software on my computer, is my computer safe from catching the Corona virus?" True.

Mark

So far, it seems that no customers of either Biznet or Globalxtreme reported any disruption to internet service during Nyepi. This is good to know - they somehow managed to avoid the government ban. Am looking at options now as using my mobile's 4g as a network is brutal on battery life (not to mention pretty rinky dink for a home wifi network), so one of these two providers might be ideal.

JohnnyCool

Mark wrote So far, it seems that no customers of either Biznet or Globalxtreme reported any disruption to internet service during Nyepi. This is good to know - they somehow managed to avoid the government ban. Am looking at options now as using my mobile's 4g as a network is brutal on battery life (not to mention pretty rinky dink for a home wifi network), so one of these two providers might be ideal.

That also happened last year with Biznet. I've wondered about how? Maybe they bypass Indonesia's physical cabling altogether and get to the internet by satellites. Don't know.

SamD

My globalxtreme connection worked normally during Nyepi. Can't fault their service. Good selection of plans, efficient and timely connection and their website is in English. And they let you stream Netflix.

spicyayam

I woke up early on Nyepi and the internet stopped at around 7am. The night before I was reading about setting up a VPN: https://www.howtogeek.com/135996/how-to-create-a-vpn-server-on-your-windows-computer-without-installing-any-software/ It doesn't seem too difficult, but I couldn't be bothered in the end. You also need to be able to forward ports as described in that article: https://www.howtogeek.com/66214/how-to-forward-ports-on-your-router/ I looked quickly at the Indihome settings and this does seem

Take IndiHome, for example. Is the modem they provide a cheap and nasty affair, that gradually decreases in "performance" over time, to get people to upgrade to a more expensive service "package"? If you upgrade, do you get a "better" modem?

The modems seem fairly standard. I bought a Mikrotik router which I intended to setup for our place, but in the end gave up. To Indihome's credit, any trouble we have had with our modems, due to whatever reason, and at least one time after it got hit by lightning, they replaced it free of charge. The weird thing about Indihome is that they will get faster and cheaper packages, but you need to go into the office to change your packages. They seem happy to keep charging you at a higher price at a lower speed. I was happy in the end to take a break from computers, but my kids were driving me nuts asking every five minutes if they could "download this". "install this game" and so on. At least I can remember when we didn't have internet to amuse ourselves.

Markit

Mark wrote Markit, what internet provider do you use?

An ode to Indihome - had full connections without recourse to a VPN throughout Nyepi and have had only the best of service from them. Up to and including outage services seem to be either same day or at the most next day. Last time a branch fell on the cable they came same day and also exchanged my router/modem for free. Was considering switching to biznet but they won't extend the dual cable the 400 meters it would require to hit 5 villas down my "road" (actually a riverbed that we drive on) but when asking about costs they "sold" their router for 50k/month or a one off of 800k. I later found it was sold online for 150k new so beware! Am presently paying 340k/month for just 10gig internet (no phone, no pool, no pets - Roger) when I in fact am usually getting 20gig. Considered buying my own router for better coverage over a large area (2000 sq meters) but found it equally as effective to attach my desktop via cable and decrease the wifi load and boost that with a couple of TP Link extenders. Very happy so far.