[Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[Jan Ceuleers]

Dear list,

I'm unable to use the speed test with either of my main browsers
(Firefox and Chrome, both under Linux) because of the above error
message. Even if I temporarily completely disable Adblock.

What is the problem here? Because what is incorrect is the error
message, not my use of browser extensions.

Thanks, Jan

Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[jb]

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The message appears when the speed test is blocked from reaching a test
server.

It has turned out to be almost always either Adblock, AdblockPlus or
NOSCRIPT

The error message is correct, at least, has been so far: it is always an
extension
and whatever extension it is, does not report to what it is doing, just
rips a hole
in the browser.

Of course, I'm happy to add an additional error if it turns out to be
incorrect.
Are you sure Adblock is disabled? and no other extensions are operating?

by the way I dislike adblock intensely, and not for selfish $ reasons, they
filter
javascript and html and CSS using regular expressions (first mistake) and
then
rip out anything matching any combinations of letters that were once or are
now
used in part of an advertising url, function or style template. In doing so
they
constantly break everything. Of course as a user, you just think a site
looks
badly formatted, or is buggy, and move on.

thanks
-Justin

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 3:38 PM, Jan Ceuleers <jan.ceuleers@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear list,
>
> I'm unable to use the speed test with either of my main browsers
> (Firefox and Chrome, both under Linux) because of the above error
> message. Even if I temporarily completely disable Adblock.
>
> What is the problem here? Because what is incorrect is the error
> message, not my use of browser extensions.
>
> Thanks, Jan
> _______________________________________________
> Bloat mailing list
> Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>

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Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[Jan Ceuleers]

On 25/04/15 13:44, jb wrote:
> The message appears when the speed test is blocked from reaching a test
> server.
> 
> It has turned out to be almost always either Adblock, AdblockPlus or
> NOSCRIPT
> 
> The error message is correct, at least, has been so far: it is always an
> extension
> and whatever extension it is, does not report to what it is doing, just
> rips a hole
> in the browser.

Justin,

I do have other extensions besides Adblock (including NoScript), but
when I get this error message I had permitted all scripts from sites I
don't distrust to run (so excluding any google/fb/twitter/... stuff that
doesn't belong) and as I said I had completely disabled AdBlock.

What I mean about the error message being incorrect is that it doesn't
tell me what the problem is, and makes an assumption about the cause of
that problem. So what server does traffic not get through to? I then
have a shot at finding out which protocol and port so that I can further
debug.

On another note: why the warnings about use of the speed test through a
proxy? Why would that invalidate the test? I run a squid instance on my
side of my DSL line, and I don't notice any significant differences in
the results with and without proxy.

Thanks, Jan

Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[jb]

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The warning is correct in that it is probably NOSCRIPT. I think.
All the speed test knows is that an API call to all servers was brutally
failed
in an unexpected way. There is no visibility into what caused the failure,
only
that it should not occur in a clean browser. If you open the console
you can probably see more than the javascript gets told.

For example if the test is given 5 servers to use, it pings them all, and
one
is unreachable, that is fine, no error is generated. The errors accusing
extensions are generated when no other possibilities are left.

I usually see users strike this when they use AdBlock or NOSCRIPT, and
I do believe there is a no-script type extension for Chrome as well. I've
not
pinned down any other cases, perhaps you are the first? but you did
mention noscript so it seems more likely now. I did ask the author
of noscript to ease things by allowing a page to suggest a list of resources
it wants whitelisted in advance, via a line in the html header, and
prompt the user "this page wants to use these resources, allow/deny",
but he said that would be "abused".

Regarding the proxy warning, the test is supposed to be maxing your
last mile link speed and reporting it to the under your ISP. The
majority of proxies seem to be things the user did not even know they
are using like google compression proxy (for chrome on mobile),
or corporate proxies for virus scanning (that perform poorly). If the
proxy is buggy or not transparent enough it breaks the test. For example
if you fetch a large file, then abort when you get 10% of it, does the
proxy fetch the whole file first? does it cache the request aggressively?
If you post, does it suck up the post, then hang without traffic until
it gets the remote response. So a warning that the results may not
be right seemed appropriate. If they are right, great!

Also there is at least one strange proxy+browser app out there, for
accelerating mobile devices. They get huge results and show the
"client" being an ISP IP address, but actually they're doing all the
work in their network. They are probably running a cloud browser
and sending html back to the device, where it is displayed by their
browser, and sending up touch events. A sort of apple screen
mirroring thing.

Do let me know if you work out what it is, perhaps noscript is a little
harder to disable than it might seem?

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 12:15 AM, Jan Ceuleers <jan.ceuleers@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 25/04/15 13:44, jb wrote:
> > The message appears when the speed test is blocked from reaching a test
> > server.
> >
> > It has turned out to be almost always either Adblock, AdblockPlus or
> > NOSCRIPT
> >
> > The error message is correct, at least, has been so far: it is always an
> > extension
> > and whatever extension it is, does not report to what it is doing, just
> > rips a hole
> > in the browser.
>
> Justin,
>
> I do have other extensions besides Adblock (including NoScript), but
> when I get this error message I had permitted all scripts from sites I
> don't distrust to run (so excluding any google/fb/twitter/... stuff that
> doesn't belong) and as I said I had completely disabled AdBlock.
>
> What I mean about the error message being incorrect is that it doesn't
> tell me what the problem is, and makes an assumption about the cause of
> that problem. So what server does traffic not get through to? I then
> have a shot at finding out which protocol and port so that I can further
> debug.
>
> On another note: why the warnings about use of the speed test through a
> proxy? Why would that invalidate the test? I run a squid instance on my
> side of my DSL line, and I don't notice any significant differences in
> the results with and without proxy.
>
> Thanks, Jan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bloat mailing list
> Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>

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Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[Jan Ceuleers]

On 26/04/15 06:17, jb wrote:
> The warning is correct in that it is probably NOSCRIPT. I think.
> All the speed test knows is that an API call to all servers was brutally
> failed
> in an unexpected way. There is no visibility into what caused the
> failure, only
> that it should not occur in a clean browser. If you open the console
> you can probably see more than the javascript gets told.

Hi Justin,

I think the problem is that you may be referring to the test servers by
IP address rather than by DNS names. Here is why I think that:

I picked Noscript's "disable everywhere" option, then successfully ran
the test. I was then able to see in Noscript which sites were running
scripts and saw a number of IP addresses among them. I then added these
IP addresses to the whitelist, re-enabled Noscript and verified that I
was able to still run the test.

If you are able to put all of these servers in a DNS domain under your
control then a single whitelist entry in Noscript would make them all
work, and not just the ones that are being picked at my location.

By the way: I then re-enabled Adblock and was still able to run the
test. So I recommend blaming Noscript in the error message rather than
Adblock (and then perhaps also mentioning the whitelist rule that fixes it).

Thanks, Jan

Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[jb]

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No, I'm not going to do that. I absolutely hate even _considering_ changing
how I want to do something for an extension that doesn't know the difference
between an IP address and a script.

There are no "Scripts" on the remote IP addresses.

Putting everything into DNS would be a problem. They are ephemeral
IPs (not all, but some), literally the cloud may bring some up for an hour
and then take them down, then bring them up with another IP.
And keeping DNS uptodate even with low TTL is a problem plus I have
fast learned that many people do not have reliable ISP DNS servers.
Some are missing info, some are very slow, some are flaky. The
test is not testing DNS reliability. There are other tests that do that
pretty well.

So .. No. lol.

I have however made the error crystal clear, it now instructs the user
to set the noscript option to "Cascade" permissions from the page
to "3rd party scripts" (lol).

To give an example of the kind of ridiculous stuff these extensions do:
a user wanted to know why something was broken on the site because
they "did not trust cloudflare.com" (which hosts jQuery for everyone).
Now if I change the location of that resource to "cdn.dslreports.com",
it would be approved by noscript  because the user trusts us.
However cdn.dslreports.com is run by.. Amazon CDN. Exactly and
perfectly the same, from a privacy/security viewpoint.

Another example, the people spending days tinkering with their noscript
or other security setup will one-click accept flash (if they wanted to run
a speed test). Or more probably, just whitelist flash, because youtube
was all flash and they want their videos. Right, that's real secure. flash
is a black box to noscript.

Alright I'm going to go away and bang my forehead against the wall now
it is more productive than thinking about NOSCRIPT !

/rant

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 4:26 PM, Jan Ceuleers <jan.ceuleers@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 26/04/15 06:17, jb wrote:
> > The warning is correct in that it is probably NOSCRIPT. I think.
> > All the speed test knows is that an API call to all servers was brutally
> > failed
> > in an unexpected way. There is no visibility into what caused the
> > failure, only
> > that it should not occur in a clean browser. If you open the console
> > you can probably see more than the javascript gets told.
>
> Hi Justin,
>
> I think the problem is that you may be referring to the test servers by
> IP address rather than by DNS names. Here is why I think that:
>
> I picked Noscript's "disable everywhere" option, then successfully ran
> the test. I was then able to see in Noscript which sites were running
> scripts and saw a number of IP addresses among them. I then added these
> IP addresses to the whitelist, re-enabled Noscript and verified that I
> was able to still run the test.
>
> If you are able to put all of these servers in a DNS domain under your
> control then a single whitelist entry in Noscript would make them all
> work, and not just the ones that are being picked at my location.
>
> By the way: I then re-enabled Adblock and was still able to run the
> test. So I recommend blaming Noscript in the error message rather than
> Adblock (and then perhaps also mentioning the whitelist rule that fixes
> it).
>
> Thanks, Jan
>
>

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Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[jb]

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And please excuse the rant. It is not directed at you personally.

I've been through this several times on-site, and tried my luck
being friendly to the noscript developer, and I'm sort of done.
You would not have known that.


On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 4:26 PM, Jan Ceuleers <jan.ceuleers@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 26/04/15 06:17, jb wrote:
> > The warning is correct in that it is probably NOSCRIPT. I think.
> > All the speed test knows is that an API call to all servers was brutally
> > failed
> > in an unexpected way. There is no visibility into what caused the
> > failure, only
> > that it should not occur in a clean browser. If you open the console
> > you can probably see more than the javascript gets told.
>
> Hi Justin,
>
> I think the problem is that you may be referring to the test servers by
> IP address rather than by DNS names. Here is why I think that:
>
> I picked Noscript's "disable everywhere" option, then successfully ran
> the test. I was then able to see in Noscript which sites were running
> scripts and saw a number of IP addresses among them. I then added these
> IP addresses to the whitelist, re-enabled Noscript and verified that I
> was able to still run the test.
>
> If you are able to put all of these servers in a DNS domain under your
> control then a single whitelist entry in Noscript would make them all
> work, and not just the ones that are being picked at my location.
>
> By the way: I then re-enabled Adblock and was still able to run the
> test. So I recommend blaming Noscript in the error message rather than
> Adblock (and then perhaps also mentioning the whitelist rule that fixes
> it).
>
> Thanks, Jan
>
>

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Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[Steinar H. Gunderson]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:00:31AM +1000, jb wrote:
> No, I'm not going to do that. I absolutely hate even _considering_ changing
> how I want to do something for an extension that doesn't know the difference
> between an IP address and a script.

What about if the user is behind NAT64? IP literals won't work at all in that
case.

/* Steinar */
-- 
Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/

Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[jb]

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If they are using NAT64, they can use an ipv6 speed test, natively, no ?

"In general, NAT64 is designed to be used when the communication
is initiated by IPv6 hosts."


On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:23 AM, Steinar H. Gunderson <
sgunderson@bigfoot.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:00:31AM +1000, jb wrote:
> > No, I'm not going to do that. I absolutely hate even _considering_
> changing
> > how I want to do something for an extension that doesn't know the
> difference
> > between an IP address and a script.
>
> What about if the user is behind NAT64? IP literals won't work at all in
> that
> case.
>
> /* Steinar */
> --
> Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/
> _______________________________________________
> Bloat mailing list
> Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat
>

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Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[David Lang]

On Sun, 26 Apr 2015, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:

> 
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:00:31AM +1000, jb wrote:
>> No, I'm not going to do that. I absolutely hate even _considering_ changing
>> how I want to do something for an extension that doesn't know the difference
>> between an IP address and a script.
>
> What about if the user is behind NAT64? IP literals won't work at all in that
> case.

If you can't get to IPv4 addresses, then you won't be able to get to the 
addresses returned by DNS either.

David Lang

Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[jb]

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yes I can make that a preference setting, but it won't be
a default (to use DNS).

The amount of supporting work is considerable, I might
put NAT64 on the 'nice to have' list for now.

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 1:27 AM, Steinar H. Gunderson <
sgunderson@bigfoot.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 01:15:15AM +1000, jb wrote:
> > If they are using NAT64, they can use an ipv6 speed test, natively, no ?
> >
> > "In general, NAT64 is designed to be used when the communication
> > is initiated by IPv6 hosts."
>
> It could still be interesting to know how the IPv4 path holds up.
>
> /* Steinar */
> --
> Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/
>

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Re: [Bloat] Adblock - or another extension - is incorrectly blocking the speed test

[Steinar H. Gunderson]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 08:35:22AM -0700, David Lang wrote:
>> What about if the user is behind NAT64? IP literals won't work at all in that
>> case.
> If you can't get to IPv4 addresses, then you won't be able to get to the
> addresses returned by DNS either.

Yes you can -- that's an essential part of how NAT64 works. You have DNS64
which rewrites those A records to AAAA records within the correct NAT64 range.

/* Steinar */
-- 
Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/