I'm Smarter Than My Network Censor!

Factual Questions
1

When I go to http://www.straightdope.com and click on ‘Message Boards’, I get the message telling me that the site has been blocked for inappropriate content’.

However, when I go to one of Cecil’s articles for the day, and click on ‘Comment on this answer’, I go to that part of the forum and then I can navigate around from there.

WTF?

Actually, I don’t mind it, and it adds the naughty thrill of bypassing the censor, but I would like to know what causes this to happen.

And no, I do not wish to access porno sites. Just a better understanding of my network.

2

If you want an even better understanding of your network you could do worse than go here --------> http://www.peacefire.org

3

Also, just out of interest, what blocking software does your company employ?

4

Look at the url for the message boards http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/ vs the home page http://www.straightdope.com/. The ip addresses of these are different. One is 63.97.40.4 and the other is 63.97.40.3. So I imagine that the guys who wrote the software are lazy and only blocked the one ip or name. (Those names are sent to a DNS server that returns the ip addresses.) If they block anything I would think that the message boards should be blocked, not the columns.

5

Ah, I see the evil forces of Ignorance are afoot.

6

To get to other sites, try this:

  1. Type the domain name in the box here at Magnus Bodin’s site. This will convert it into various styles of IP address.
  2. Cut and paste just the numbers of an address into the address bar of your browser.
  3. If you are lucky, the machine will never know what site you’re going to on the sly.

For example, the 56-bit decimal IP address of http://www.straightdope.com is 282579846637571. Type that in (without the period, of course) and press enter.