Road Runner High Speed Internet HTTP Redirecting All Invalid Domains Requested

Advertisement filled domain search sites, once the domain of shady domain squatters, have shown up on Road Runner High Speed Internet for URLs of invalid domains.

Earlier this evening I decided to visit the website for a paint ball field in Syracuse NY. Looking for their address I tried to visit their site http://www.headrush.com. Unfortunately I mistyped and ended up at http://www.headrus.com. I was greeted with the site pictured below.

Road Runner Squatter Search Page Screenshot 1

At first I just thought this was some sort of funny coincidence. My ISP just happened to be squatting the domain I mistyped. But wait, Road Runner High Speed doesn’t squat domains. They only play in the high-speed internet and shitty customer service markets. They couldn’t POSSIBLY be doing what I think they’re doing? Are they redirecting invalid domains to a search page of their design? I visited http://hdalashqwhqhffa.com just to check.

Road Runner Squatter Search Page Screenshot 2

To be honest this pisses me off. I’m paying them no small chunk of change for access to the Internet. This in itself doesn’t bother me. However, what I am paying them for is for unfettered access to the internet as a resource, not a pre-filtered monitored windowpane into it. If I wanted a service that corrected me, protected me, monitored me, and alerted me to everything out there automatically I’d sign up for AOL.

Annoyed consumer “I don’t pay for this to happen” complaints aside, I have a small script I’ve been running for a while which monitors referrer logs from my websites. It attempts pinpoint invalid requests by watching for forged referrer headers. In the past the script has worked great. I’ve found some interesting request data for my site that I never would have seen otherwise. Now, however, the little “callback” script notes every request as valid.

Fixing the problems with my log checker isn’t hard. I could check the domain name to see if it’s valid. Regardless, I don’t want invalid domains returning me a HTTP redirect. That’s not the way it works.

On the up side, they do have an opt-out for the service.

Road Runner Search Page Opt-Out image

I find it humorous that they say you can “opt-in or out of this service”. There is no opt-in. They give it to you by default.

Frankly I am disgusted by the number of ISPs that think this sort of content tampering is ok. First Rogers (a Canadian ISP) tests inserting content into existing pages for convenience sake, and now Road Runner is replacing invalid addresses with their own squatting style search site. If I’m supposed to receive a no such domain error, I want to receive a no such domain error.

Admittedly Road Runner’s tactics are a little nicer than those of Rogers listed above, but it’s not that far to jump from this to inserting their own content into my pages.

This, my friends, is why we need to nip this Net Neutrality thing in the butt now.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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10 Responses to “Road Runner High Speed Internet HTTP Redirecting All Invalid Domains Requested”

  1. BP Says:
    February 15th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    I saw that the other day (like a month ago) that one of my cronjobs was reporting getting A records when they expected NX records. After 1 minute of typing in a fake domain name, I found that out.

    However, they didn’t have the “opt-out” service when I called. The first person said that doing DNS queries violated the terms of service, I hope she’s been fired by now. The second person didn’t know what DNS was or how it was important to the internet. So little to say I got talking to their network engineers about why NX records are important. So they added the “opt-out” service for people like us who know what’s up.

  2. coderjoe Says:
    February 15th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    @BP:

    Wow you must have found it day one, I obviously didn’t run into the problem until my logs got suspiciously large.

    While it is depressing, it doesn’t surprise me that the “service” was auto opt-in with no option to opt out. What happened to the type of forethought that used to exist in networking technology that has resulted in such long lasting technologies as DNS in the first place.

    Just to clarify for anybody who is unfamiliar with the DNS protocol, an NX response is a Non-eXistent domain response.

    I’m very glad you managed to talk to a network tech, I wasn’t able to get my ticket elevated despite multiple calls. After finding the opt-out I couldn’t rationalize spending any extra time on the problem.

    Thanks for your persistence!

  3. Robert Peaslee Says:
    February 19th, 2008 at 4:41 am

    Good post. I too noticed the redirect, but never spent enough time looking into it to notice the opt-out link.

    I mean, honestly – could they have put it anywhere else that would have gotten less attention?

    Thanks for the post, and for pointing it out.

  4. corinnew Says:
    March 20th, 2008 at 8:29 pm

    I noticed that they were redirecting domains, when perfectly well spelled domains kept getting redirected. I took screenshots of pages such as http://www.google.com getting redirected and showed them to several Time Warner Cable techs who came out here to try and fix the problem. They didn’t want to admit it’s a DNS problem. I switched to OpenDNS & opted out of the redirection system – which seems to have taken care of the problem.

    Yes, I thought it was hypocritical to offer an “opt in or opt out” link when it is opt-in by default. When I first called in about it, the lady had never heard of DNS redirection. She put me on hold, and when she came back, she explained that this had “somehow” been switched on on my account… She made it sound like it wasn’t supposed to be on by default. She stepped me through the opting out process, but when Time Warner came and replaced my modem, the redirection got turned back on. So I’m thinking they are using the MAC address to redirect.

    Time Warner should have learned a lesson from Facebook’s Beacon debacle. Quietly enabling their Beacon advertising system on everyone’s account didn’t go over so well for them. They had to change it from an opt-out to an opt-in feature. I think the ethical thing to do here, would be for Time Warner to follow suit and make it an opt-in service.

  5. coderjoe Says:
    March 20th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    @corinnew

    Sounds like someone at Time Warner really messed things up in your case. Glad to hear you got it all resolved. I’d be wary of using OpenDNS permanently. While OpenDNS has helped me out of a bind with DNS problems in the past, a little voice in my head always warns me to be wary of their ability to alter my web experience.

    See the link below for an example of “questionable” practices.
    http://blog.opendns.com/2007/05/22/google-turns-the-page/

    While the intent is admirable, their willingness to take the onus out of the hands of the user with such a low level protocol will always worry me.

    Or I could just be paranoid. :)

    Cheers.

  6. Road Runner is at it again… Says:
    March 30th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    [...] Road Runner is at it again… [...]

  7. jr Says:
    August 14th, 2008 at 1:44 am

    404 PAGE NOT FOUND

    is the only appropriate answer in all cases.

    road runner needs to take some of that

    money we’re GIVING them and purchase

    a MORAL COMPASS.

    jr

  8. coderjoe Says:
    August 14th, 2008 at 7:31 am

    @jr

    Just keep in mind that 404 would not be appropriate.
    Since we’re talking about a domain name resolution failure, your request will never reach a web server.
    The 404 message is the web server’s not found message, since your request should not reach a web server this response is inappropriate.

    Your computer should send out a query to your DNS server which should eventually receive a non-existent domain response, your browser would then display whatever error page it shows when a domain does not exist.

    I feel the larger problem we’re fighting here is a social rather than a moral issue.
    When many people connect to the Internet they see themselves as using access sold to them by a company.
    When companies sell people access to the internet they see themselves as selling a product.

    The majority on both sides doesn’t seem to realize that by connecting to the Internet you’re becoming a component contributing to the Internet’s health.
    If more people were aware of the effects of their presence on the network, more people would probably be upset by the actions of ISPs doing such meddling in core protocols.

  9. cristina aquinta Says:
    September 1st, 2008 at 10:49 am

    hi, cool web site and good articles.
    The The first step is to learn how to find out what your Internet speed is.The Internet speed is determined by 2 components: the download rate and the upload rate of data which are usually measured in Kilobits per second.
    Then after you know the upload and download rate, you can use tools or tweaks to improve your internet speed, or take the decision to change your ISP.

  10. wth Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 7:16 am

    to christina aquinta–what the hell are you talking about?? ummm,,you’re maybe in the wrong forum??? what does surf (upload /download)speed have to do with the disrespectful redirect topic here???? nothing! are you possibally a pc newbie?? pleeeeze email me cause i’d luv to know the answer. and besides,,you sound cute/. and now..something completely el differento.
    i noticed this redirect thngy a long time ago and wondrered if it wasn’t along the same area as being hijacked!
    actually it is.i’d much rather see a “page don’t exist message”(404) than the crap that road runner leads me to. i think the worst of it is when you’re not aware of what’s going on cause it’s confusing..period.. i knew it wasn’t right the first time it happened,even though i wasn’t sure what caused it(even though it should have been obvious to me right away).is there a way in which to disable the redirect and get back my precious 404??? maybe it’s just that i got used to it but i want it back!!

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