[DaveRolyat]

It seems that some of the connection problems are not just proxy/port related. I believe that the BBO URL is on some kind of blacklist in the UK. For example if I try to play bridge on the Virgin Trains Wi-Fi, it says that BBO is not allowed, on the grounds that it's a "game" and is therefore deemed a waste of bandwidth I guess. I think the same is true of some university access controls.

Is there any way that you could have another URL, or even better a roving one, gets us into BBO without our servers seeing the current URL?

[pescetom]

 DaveRolyat, on 2018-October-29, 08:54, said:

It seems that some of the connection problems are not just proxy/port related. I believe that the BBO URL is on some kind of blacklist in the UK. For example if I try to play bridge on the Virgin Trains Wi-Fi, it says that BBO is not allowed, on the grounds that it's a "game" and is therefore deemed a waste of bandwidth I guess. I think the same is true of some university access controls.

It IS a game. I can see why a University or workplace might not be enthusiastic about this, but not a train service. It consumes very little bandwidth. Did you try complaining to Virgin Trains ?

[paulg]

I had no problems when Virgin ran the East Coast line earlier this year and it's been fine on the LNER franchise that replaced them.

[barmar]

If we did this it would probably just be a temporary fix, they'll learn the new URL in time.

"Roving" URLs are most often used by malware sites, to try to get around anti-virus filters. Doing that would be a good way for us to get blocked by lots more services, since we'll look like that type of system.