Subject: bug#39448: 26.1; ERC connect wierdness

From: Corwin Brust <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2020 13:29:11 -0600

Hi again,

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 11:39 PM Corwin Brust <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Greetings!  I'm reporting at the request of Bandali
>

Adding detail, again at the request of Bandali.

/d/emax64/bin/runemacs.exe -Q --eval '(setq erc-debug-irc-protocol
> t)(raise-frame)'
[...]

> 1. ERC appears to start, ERC: CLOSED shown in the mode-line, "Connecting
> [...]" in the minibuffer.
>
> 2. It appears to just sit there
>
[... ]

>   *** ERC terminated: failed with code 10060
>
[... etc ...]

I found that my ISP, Comcast, has added a service they call "Protected
Browsing" or "Safe Browsing" or "xFi Advanced Security" depending on
whether you are the web portal, the documentation for the web portal, or at
their marketing, etc.

Here's a forum thread with details for turning this off:

https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Email-Web-Browsing/Unblock-all-websites/td-p/3292083

Looking at the web portal I could see that lots of requests to port 113
were getting blocked (many with alarming log commentary about "China" and
"Australia" and other parts foreign.  The horror).

Once I completely disabled the Comcast security feature, whatever it's
called, ERC connects without difficulty.

I think this may still be a valid bug, however, as I was able to connect to
Freenode (used for testing in all cases) from rcirc even while Comcast's
anti-productivity software was active.  I'm curious how the two different
IRC implementations handle/depend on IDENT.  I'll dig into this if I can
and report with such clues or questions as I find.

Regards,
-- 
*Corwin*
612-217-1742
612-298-0615 (fax)
612-695-4276 (mobile)
*corwin.brust (skype)[email-masked] <[email-masked]>*