NOW TV Blocked on Community Fibre Broadband

[PF73]

I'm unable to access Now TV va my Community Fibre Broadband.  No one at NOW can tell me why.  The TV team hand me over to broadband and the broadband team tell me they can't help because I don't have NOW broadband so I'm going in circles.  If I try to log in I get an 'Access Denied' message saying that 'You don't have permission to access "http://www.nowtv.com/" on this server.

I'm told it may be because the Community Fibre IP range is being blocked.

Cn anyone provide some intelligence as to what the problem could be.  

[gavs82008]

@PF73 

Have you tried a factory reset to the stick? 
As you haven't mentioned the device and put this in the NOW stick section I am assuming this is the device in question. 

Is it all or just one device you're having issues with?

[PF73]

@gavs82008 Hi

I probably put this in the wrong group.  Newbie error!

It's on all devices, Phone, PC, Amazon stick, smart tv to name a few.  I suspect that NOW TV are blocking the IP Range from Community Broadband but I can't get through to anyone to discuss it.

I've tried connecting to the modem, bypassing the router, and the result it the same.  Restarted all devices in question too.

[gavs82008]

@PF73 

Ah no worries, just wanted to clarify so any other fellow users can maybe pitch in for help. 

Have you tried a full power down of the router for around 30 minutes? There could be a weird fault with the IP your router has been shoving out. 

[PF73]

Thanks, I'll give that a go.

[RoyB]

@PF73 

Here’s an earlier poster with the same issue:-

https://community.nowtv.com/t5/Other-Apps/Apple-TV-4K-Now-app-won-t-let-me-log-in/m-p/617275/highlig...

But he was so in love with Community Fibre, as you will see there, he simply couldn’t accept it was them; though to my mind, he had clearly proved it.

As a test, try setting your mobile phone to be a hotspot. Then, on the device, or a device, that you can’t get Now on over CF, see if you can get Now if you switch that device’s WiFi to the hotspot.

If you can, then the issue is pretty obviously with CF; or at least, the onus is on them to prove it isn’t, so get on their helpline and see if they can sort this out.

We will be agog to know how you get on, so please report back.

[PF73]

@RoyB Thanks. Very useful. 
 I was at my parents house and logged in without a problem. NOW also works with 4G when tethering my computer to my phone. The issue only occurs when using CF. 
I even tried using Ethernet connection from the modem bypassing the router and got the same result, Access Denied’. 

I’m at a loss about what to do next!

[Nitro]

@PF73 whats your DNS Server set at? Also can you request a static IP?

[jon12345895]

@RoyB Your post caused me to loose a lot of braincells, so I had to sign up to reply to you, the confidence in an area you know nothing about is shocking

I've had the dismay of working with similar IP Geolocation services, very likely the one that NowTV uses. The poster did not prove that it was a CF issue, why does the poster only have issues with NowTV? What about Netflix? Any other UK based streaming service? Banking apps? Google login pages not showing the different location? Literally any other website that would cause you issues for being located outside the UK - Other than NowTV

It's not CF's fault, it's most likely Maxmind or a similar service

Among with sending FBI agents to some random family farm that was the default location reported when Maxmind di..., Maxmind encourages their customers who need to serve responses quickly to take a copy of their database. This solution is used by dominos.co.uk, you can get an error that's exactly the same if you try to visit them from outside the UK. The problem is, those customers often don't update the database for many years.

Pretty much NowTV has a local copy of a database from a service like Maxmind or similar, on which CF's IP block is assigned to another country, datacenter provider, or something of the likes

[RoyB]

@jon12345895 

Do you agree that the problem is isolated to CF and Now? While your theory has legs, so does the theory that CF have somehow misclassified Now as a website that should be blocked.

But either way, what can Now do, compared with what CF can do? Now can check an IP address, to see if they think they are blocking it, and that’s about it.

CF can attempt to access Now, using powerful diagnostic software, and determine precisely what the issue is. If it’s a CF problem, they can then start to fix it. If it looks like a Now problem, they can get on to their counterparts in Now, business to business, to get it resolved.

Quite often in cases like this, it’s not clear-cut that one party is right and the other wrong; there can be two different interpretations of the same RFC going on, for example -  I recall an example of this with Demon Internet, though not which RFC alas, when they weren’t following a ‘should’, and the other party were relying on them doing that. A reliance the other party had to give up, as it wasn’t a ‘must’.

But the issue needs to be resolved between the two internet providers, and CF are much better placed to initiate that process.

By the way, we try to proceed here without personal abuse, or even misplaced ideas about other peoples’ levels of expertise 😢