Bypassing DNS Block of TM Streamyx

Recently I noticed there was lag whenever I tried to access internet. I guess the recent government directive to Streamyx and other ISP providers in Malaysia in an attempt to use DNS block has resulted in a slower internet access. Such DNS blocking is futile as it was very easy to bypass DNS block.

The Malaysian government went against their promise (perhaps even illegal since it went against the MSC Malaysia Bill of Guarantee) of giving its citizen unrestricted access to the internet and instructed Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to block off certain sites. So much for freedom of information. The reasoning behind it was to fight against piracy and against illegal file sharing sites. That’s the overt reasoning, I should think there is also a covert conspiracy to also shut off opposition website as well too since they did get a hammering during the 2008 general election as the opposition used the internet media to voice out their opinion thus making the current coalition losing so many Parliament seats that they are now so desperate to get back their 2/3 majority.

If government can go against what they have tabled in the parliament then surely they can do whatever they pleased legally or illegally. Anyway, I’m not here to blog about the ills of bad governance, but rather to find a solution to bypass the DNS blocking. So far the blockage is fairly simple unlike the Chinese government far more advance method of clamping of freedom of information (you can’t even watch Youtube in China and you need sophisticated DNS proxy to get around China government blockage plus you might end up in jail too!)

Anyway, the DNS block seemed to have caused my Streamyx internet connection to slow down to certain web sites. These site that slowdown I can’t even get a decent connection to do anything. I wasn’t really planning to do any DNS block bypass since I don’t do any of those file sharing download stuff, unfortunately it was collateral damage to normal users like me and so no choice but to use it.

My brother showed it to me and it was simple and straight forward. Instead of using TM/Streamyx primary and secondary DNS of 202.188.0.133 and 202.188.1.5 respectively, all that was needed was to change it to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and that’s it! This set of DNS belonged to Google it seems. So now my internet data is no longer routed via TM/Streamyx servers where the DNS blocking is done, instead it now goes through Google without facing any censoring. I believing the censoring is causing a heavy load with their subroutine thereby slowing down my broadband connection, bypassing it, now I get faster connection. I’m not sure if my explanation is right but the faster connection seemed to prove it.




And of course, the censoring of the internet has caused ire from the underground international internet community and the backlashed caused many government website to be hacked. Fortunately mostly minor defacement. Hah! Even the government engages hackers (though not confirmed, mostly conspiracy theory, but how else to explain why the alternate media went down in the first place?) to create Denial-Of-Service against alternate media to clam down on opposition reporting. So sort of an irony here.


Related post:
List of DNS servers addresses in Malaysia and International including Google DNS servers and Open DNS servers