AT&T explains why it blocked Cloudflare DNS: It was just an accident

[Archiee]

AT&T has been blocking the new Cloudflare DNS service, but AT&T says the blocking was unintentional and that it will fix the problem soon.

The blocking is affecting AT&T home Internet customers who use an AT&T gateway. Cloudflare unveiled its DNS service on April 1, and users in DSLReports forum threads almost immediately started complaining that they couldn't access it. One thread began on April 1, within hours of Cloudflare's announcement.

"I am now unable to reach 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, which is unfortunate because those are the DNS servers I use," one user wrote.

Other AT&T Internet customers say they were able to use Cloudflare's DNS temporarily, and then they received a firmware update that blocked Cloudflare DNS. Some users said the problem occurred after a firmware update to AT&T's Arris BGW210-700 gateway.

 

"I have a BGW210-700 from AT&T. I was using 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 without issues until this morning," one user wrote on April 10. "From the logs, it seems AT&T pushed a new firmware down to the device and restarted it remotely. Now, I cannot reach 1.1.1.1 or 1.0.0.1."

"1.1.1.1 was working for me on AT&T after Cloudflare released 1.1.1.1, then shortly after that it ceased working," another AT&T customer wrote this week. "Maybe the firmware update has a bug, but it's very suspiciously timed." In reply to that comment, another user said that "it worked for a day or so and then stopped."

Controversy continued to build this week when Reddit and Hacker News threads pointed to the original complaints and described ongoing problems. On Wednesday, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince criticized AT&T and seemed to indicate that he thought the blocking is intentional. AT&T "appear,

Controversy continued to build this week when Reddit and Hacker News threads pointed to the original complaints and described ongoing problems. On Wednesday, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince criticized AT&T and seemed to indicate that he thought the blocking is intentional. AT&T "appear.

Cloudflare pitches 1.1.1.1 as a privacy tool that can help deter ISPs from monitoring one's Internet usage. AT&T lobbied against broadband privacy rules last year, and the company used to charge fiber Internet customers extra for privacy. AT&T fiber customers who did not opt in to a traffic scanning system that analyzed Internet usage in order to deliver personalized ads had to pay at least $29 more per month than customers who consented to the scanning.

AT&T ended the controversial traffic scanning program in September 2016, but it says that it still wants the "flexibility" to expand advertising-focused business models to compete against Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

One AT&T user who couldn't connect to 1.1.1.1 or 1.0.0.1 wrote on April 5 that it "Makes you wonder why AT&T would be continuing to roll this [firmware] out knowing they are blocking DNS servers. I wonder if it's on purpose due to the added privacy offered by 1.1.1.1?"

Other people suspected it was just a mistake.

"This is almost certainly just there to block people who mistakenly paste in an example configuration somewhere," a Hacker News poster speculated. "Also, why on earth would AT&T block 1.1.1.1 and not Google DNS and OpenDNS?"