M-Web has made good on its promise to cut off non-M-Web subscribers from its sites. It may have performed its task a little too well, with DSTV, M-Net, and Supersport subscribers cut off from their information portals, while Mail and Guardian readers can no longer access mg.co.za either. ITWeb recently discovered that access to sa.internet.com has also been restricted.
M-Web`s COO, e-media division, William Marais, says that the M-Net, DSTV, and Supersport site will be configured to offer certain information - such as programme guides - in the public domain, while other content will be restricted. The electronic Mail & Guardian will remain closed for non-M-Web subscribers.
Meanwhile, workarounds for the problem have been suggested to ITWeb. The easiest to use are services like anonymizer (http://www.anonymizer.com/), which allows Web surfers to open up M-Web and its associated portals through anonymous Web surfing technology.
Another option is to use a content grabber, such as Octopus (www.octopus.com), which builds you a portal, and retrieves the M-Web content from its server, thus making it appear that you are not a dial-up user.
M-Web says that, for the moment, it will not restrict access to its portals through such methods. "If users want to use up our competitors` international bandwidth, we will let them," says Andr'e Retief, technical director, M-Web. "The performance through using such methods is abysmal. If this becomes common practice, M-Web may change its stance on the issue."
Faking your proxy may also work. "It is possible to bypass M-Web`s restrictions merely by making use of a proxy server which isn`t `blacklisted`," comments Bretton Vine, Internet consultant. "For example even if I dial into iAfrica and set my browser proxy settings to proxy.is.co.za any website I visit will log the proxy.is.co.za address, not my IP. However I think it is possible to setup proxy configurations to prevent this from happening, but few proxy servers are configured to do this."
Although M-Web refuses to comment on how they are blocking competitor dial-up subscribers from their site, the method could also slow their content portals` servers and restrict their bandwidth. "Doing reverse address lookup in real time can increase the load on the server by as much as 40%," say Kimball and Merz in their book The Data Webhouse Toolkit (published by Wiley).
"Reverse lookups could increase the amount of DNS traffic," concurs Vine. "With enough DNS traffic this could in theory affect overall speed."
"Without going into detail of how we did it, we have seen an improved performance from our portals," counters Retief. "There has been no degradation in our server load, bandwidth, or latency."
M-Web adds that its advertising costs are not expected to be affected by the move. Marais says that the company has seen only a "limited drop-off in figures" since it implemented its new policy.
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