Hello everyone!

I have a rather specific question related to dial-up ppp-connections, the provider used for that and HTML.
I do not know much about HTML so I was not able to figure this out myself - any help or hints are much appreciated!

Since this is rather long - here is the question it all boils down to:

What is causing this annoying redirection of any page first loaded --> to the providers homepage?

The problem is this:

I use dial-up ppp-connections to connect to internet, using different providers - depending on the time of day.
The prices per minute are different depending on which number you use at which time of the day - thats why I have configured about 8 different connections to dial in at the lowest rate at a given time.
There is a rather strange and annoying behavior when using one specific provider:

The first page I request using this provider will ALWAYS be changed to this providers homepage - no matter, what page I request - even an invalid one will be redirected to this providers homepage.

What is REALLY annoying - if I try to reload that page - i.e. the http://www.linuxquestions.org - it will STILL be redirected - effectively making it impossible for me to ever visit this site.

I live in Germany and the providers homepage is: http://www.meome.de - do not worry - if you are coming in to this site via _any_ other provider or way, this will not happen to you!
That is why it could be, that only Germans could be able to help - because trying to dial in from outside Germany would be rather expensive...

I have the following setup:

- wwwoffle (a simple proxy-server) is running to make offline browsing of all the webpages I have visited possible - and this works very well and is - by the way - one of the most useful programs I ever installed...(the problem is for SURE not related to online/offline modes !)

- my browser is connecting to this proxy when getting something off the net - so: the browsers own cache for pages is disabled - to avoid caching the same page twice and introducing problems this way as well as making it slower

-I have tried to disable javascript in the browser (to disable any script in the offending homepage which could possibly cause this) - but was not successful - the provider is still changing the first page I call when I dialed in throug one of his own numbers.

- the browser used for browsing is not making any difference - I have Mozilla 1.7b / Epiphany / Firefox-0.9.1 but only ever use Firefox which is really a good one!

- at this time, I go around this problem, by using caution: I always request and load this providers homepage first - only after that I can do whatever I wanted to do and it will work...
But sometimes - when I forgot to do this - and requested Google or LQ or ebay or whatever first, this page is effectively gone fore me!

To cure this situation I have to remove the site from the cache of my proxy-server (wwwoffle).
If I was not using a proxy, this would be done by just cleaning the browser-cache - which does the same thing. (I tried this by connecting not trough the proxy but directly to internet).
But this is not a real solution - I want to be able to use the proxy-cache - and if it only was to look up the current price per minute without connecting to the net.
This is the reason, why I do not want to just stop my proxy caching this providers homepage - which could be done easily.

So here is my question again: What is (could be) causing this annoying redirection of any page first loaded --> to the providers homepage?

Thanks for staying with me till now!

Hmmm well it sounds like your provider allways sends their page whenever you make your first page request and then wwwoffle caches this page and serves it back to you whenever you repeat your first request. The simplest way around this I can think of is to set your 'Home Page' to something you are never going to want to visit. That way when you start your browser it will ask for the 'unwanted' homepage - that page will get splatted by you ISP and wwwoffle will cache the page that you know you will never want to visit!

One small correction on my post: this redirect does only occur for real internet adresses - not for wrong or fake ones, as I was saying.

Thanks Galik!

...this is what I do already - only that I set my browser to start with a blank page and - when using this isp - giving it a request for his own page at first.

The annoying thing is: should I forget to do that - I will be screwed - at least until I removed the (now changed) pages off my cache.
This is done quickly but involves a few steps: disconnect from internet - stop the proxy-cache - remove the entry - start the proxy-cache again and - finally reconnect and try again.

Also annoying is: having to load (that means - wait for) a page - which I rarely want to see - on every startup of a new internet-connection-session.

My question was more aimed at: How would they do such things - so that I would possibly be able to figure out a way to get around that (with your help, that is...)
How can they redirect EVERY first request for ANY page to theirs? Could it be their DNS configured this way ? But then it would work to re-request that page and get what you wanted - but not here!
If I was asking for ebay - I would - for this session at least - always be redirected to their homepage - no ebay this session!

any ideas?

...still no ideas ?
I will provide every information necessary - if I only knew which ...

This is the trick in my suggestion. Instead of seting your broeser to a blank page you need to set it to a real page on the internet. One that you never visit. If you do that then when you start your browser it will connect to your start page and be redirected to your ISP. This way you can not forget to go to a page that you don't want to visit first. The browser will have done that for you.

yes - you are right - but the main thing is that I wanted to avoid having to load a page first - and wait for it to load - although I do not want to see it.
your suggestion is good - but would also not "save" me when my browser is alredy open - as is often the case.

This is ONE way around the problem - but annoying still!

I would really like to know, HOW they could manage to do, what they are doing: replacing the first page wanted by my browser with their own - whenever I started a new internet connection (whenever I dial in)

Would I have to look in the source-code of the HTML of their page ?...For what would I have to look?

Well the problem is that they are your Service Provider. This means that in order to contact *any* other machine on the internet you *must* first contact their machine. This is the *gateway* machine. Now they could essentially do anything they want on the gateway machine. Perhaps they are running a proxy server that traps your first request and redirects it to their own site. The bottom line is that they have full control here. I think it's unlikely you'll be able to circumvent them hijacking your requests. Perhaps you could contact them and ask them about this. It's not innconcievable that there are laws against deliberately redirecting requests. I must admit it would make me pretty angry if my ISP acted like this.

Hi jomen.

Interesting problem.
I may have a partial solution to this.

When you first boot up, don't open your usual browser, instead, run lynx in a teminal and point it to your ISP. I'm assuming that the gateway server only cares about the first request per on-line session per single IP address.
This way, at least, you may be able to open your "graphical" browser and not be annoyed by this problem.
I hope this works for you!

Crow.

I will probably do this - kindly asking them to explain, what happens here.
But maybe you are able to figure out, if this really is, what they are doing - I think so!

I have - after connecting to this ISP - requested a page from http://www.test.de (which is a real internet-adress...)
As usual - I got redirected to http://www.meome.de and from there to their startup-page.

I have not visited this site (http://www.test.de) before - so it was not cached.

When I now examine the cache - and what is stored under http://www.test.de - I see two files:
-one with just the original address in it - could be specific to the proxy-cache I use...

-one with these contents:

------------------snip
HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily

Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 19:45:14 GMT

Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix)

Location: http://www.meome.de/customerindex.html

Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Age: 0

X-Cache: MISS from lpz2-t2-2.mcbone.net

Connection: close

Proxy-Connection: close



<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>302 Found</TITLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>Found</H1>
The document has moved <A HREF="http://www.meome.de/customerindex.html">here</A>.<P>
</BODY></HTML>
------------------snip

I think, this indicates, what you said - they deliberately redirect every first request to their own page, and there is nothing I can do to avoid that - whenever I accidentally request a page first, which is not their own - I will not be able to see it, until I cleared the cache...
My setup - using a proxy-cache may be a little special - but it would not make a difference, where I just using a browser like most people do - it would just be easier to cure that problem by closing the browser and/or clearing the browsers own cache.
Would you think, that this is correct? (the thinking part...)

and thanks blackcrow!

I already do this - because it saves me to load all the graphics and does not take as long to complete therefore...

O.K. - stupid me!

sorry for bothering you - I should have read the configuration options more carefully - and experimented with them before I asked...!

This is the option in the config-file of my proxy-cache which was set to "no" and setting it to "yes" did what was to be expected - if I reload that page, I will get the current version, and this way the site I was originally asking for...


# [<URL-SPEC>] request-redirection = yes | no
# While online pages that redirect the client to another URL temporarily
# will be requested again. (default=no). This option takes precedence
# over the request-changed and request-changed-once options.
#


But still: this ISP forces me to look up their page first...


Thank You!