Blocked IP Address
Asked by NathanaelA:

Is there some sort of block for Mexican StarLink clients? My ip address is on the starlink network which rotates thru several ips (seems to switch every couple days) but today it is 149.19.169.24 which shows up in the MaxMind database as Mexico (correct), and StarLink as the Carrier (correct), so it is not a maxmind issue.

I've always had some random issues connecting to Bitbucket from different mexico IP's over the last year, but haven't seen any of these issues since going to StarLink about 6 months ago...

I've checked both your status page, and a couple diffent outage sites and everything shows green for Bitbucket and I'm not having any issues accessing anything else...

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Just a update, my ip changed today to be: 149.19.169.243 and I still cannot access Bitbucket, but obviously can access other atlassian resources. And the greater internet I have had zero other site issues.


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Most personal IP addresses change regularly, as ISPs are short of ipv4 addresses to use. Mine changes roughly once a month. But they will stay within a range of addresses the ISP "owns"

Atlassian are blocking ranges of IP addresses, but they do it across the board - if it's an Atlassian block, you will not be able to reach any Atlassian Cloud services, not just Bitbucket. (FWIW, they block IPs known to be malicious, and, at the moment, some IP ranges associated with organisations supporting the illegal invasion of Ukraine)

Are you sure it is a network block? What is the error messaging?

comments: author: NathanaelA
body: Yep, I do contract work including servers \& networking, so quite familiar with networks, servers, and isp's. Just wasn't sure how much info would help the first tier techs who normally have to pass everything on up the chain. Figured they would just pass up the IP addresses to the network staff to see if there is a block for the range of addresses and maybe explain why... ;-)

Basically to answer your question it always times out.

I use a VPN to work around the issue, but it is annoying to have to use it just for one site. The only reason I suspect it is an actual block is because I've seen this behavior before on the BB site and on a couple other specific geo-fenced sites. I've always been able to get to the other Atlassian properties, just BB has issues, which I haven't seen them for months since switching to StarLink.

Since I have no issues getting to anything else on the internet and the dns provides the exact same IP address to me here as to my servers, which do reach BB fine (I've also seen dns issues in the past from BB). The issue, imho, has to be something to do with either BB or BB's upstream network provider.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Interesting, that's a really comprehensive set of testing you've done, you've eliminated all sorts of potential problems, but the symptom that jumps out at me is "it times out".

Atlassian blocks to Cloud systems don't churn and time out, they just return a "blocked" immediately. So it's not a block on that side.

It could still be that the Cloud site is not responding of course, but if there's nothing showing on the status page, and it has been happening for a while, and it is consistent, I'm afraid the problem has to be between Atlassian Cloud and your connection. It's not an Atlassian problem.

Using a VPN as a workaround is pretty telling - it absolutely means your network is interfering, not Atlassian's


author: NathanaelA
body: A VPN connection via Canada or US does not say it is my network, it basically says from a completely different country (\& an IP from inside that country) I can access BB fine. :-) I haven't actually tried VPN'g into another Mexican IP address, as the simplest method to eliminate any Geo-fencing or silly blocks is to use an IP from a different country that is known to for sure work, I know for sure BB works from USA \& Canada! ;-)

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Throughout today I've did some a lot more testing to try and narrow it down, and I was able to connect to several machines around the BB site 104.192.141.1, only .1 was blocked... So that says my network to the Amazon network hosting the BB load balancer is working fine. Which again points to it being just the .1 machine having a block list on it..

Then I figured out a couple other BB ip addresses and I could connect to them fine, so it doesn't appear to be a global block from my address other than the main IP address...

So using the processes of elimination on why only this address is block -- I have figured out that one of my routers block lists must have updated in the last couple of days and added only the main BB ip address to the blocked sites (my assumption is the malware list). Adding the main .1 site to the allow list, fixes the issue.

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It did end up being an issue on MY end and not the Atlassian side. I apologize for the false report, anyone else seeing blocking issues recently -- check to see if you have any router level block lists. It seems weird to see BB on it... White/allow listing the address normally will override any deny lists...


author: NathanaelA
body: I confirmed that 104.192.141.1 is actually on several of the malware/virus block lists... So this is exactly why it got "banned" from my network via the automatic router block list updates...


author: Matthew Steven Miller
body: Hi Nathan and Nic,

I use Starlink in Canada and am experiencing a similar issue. My connection often times out when I check the status of my connection via the Fork client, and confirmed when I ping bitbucket.org via CMD.

Sometimes I can fix the issue temporarily by unplugging/ plugging the ethernet cable to my computer. I have a ticket open here already, but we haven't been able to come up with a solution.

Have you been able to figure things out?

Thanks, Matt


author: NathanaelA
body: My issue ended up being one of the block lists I use on my router for my whole network security -- apparently because you can download malware source code from bitbucket, that has put bitbucket on several of the malware block lists. Annoying, but technically accurate...

A couple ways to fix/workaround:

1. White list the ip (104.192.141.1) at the router, most block lists have the ability to override the blocks manually. This normally solves the issue for good, and did for me.

2. Tell your computer to use a different IP address when it resolves bitbucket.org, one of the many ways I worked around it back in 2022, was I discovered that 18.205.93.2 is also a valid ip address for bitbucket.org, so putting that in my computers network hosts file as the ip address for "bitbucket.org" allowed me to use the bitbucket services, because that ip isn't on the block list...

3. Use a VPN.

Good luck!


author: Matthew Steven Miller
body: Hi Nathanael,

I was able to fix the issue by bypassing the Starlink router and simply using the ASUS routers we use to distribute internet throughout the house. I didn't need to whitelist bitbucket.

I want to thank you for your suggestions, as they definitely pointed me in the right direction.

Regards, Matt


Tags: bitbucket-cloud

cloud