EuroBillTracker connection timeout issues on Vodafone Portugal Mobile (CGNAT IPv4)

[Castanhola]

Hi EBT Team,

I wanted to report a recurring issue accessing the EuroBillTracker, the EBT Forum and City Manager, when tethering from macOS via Vodafone Portugal Mobile. This only happens when I access EBT and related websites on my Mac using my iPhone as a hotspot, but I can still access them when using my iPhone directly. In this situation, I receive the following error message:
- Looks like there’s a problem with your internet connection. We can’t connect to the server at pt.eurobilltracker.com.

The connection times out on TCP port 443 (135.181.212.44), while traceroute completes successfully. The issue is immediately resolved by toggling Airplane Mode on the phone to acquire a new CGNAT public IPv4 address.

It appears that certain shared Vodafone PT CGNAT IPv4 addresses are getting flagged/blocked by firewall rules on your Hetzner host. Could you check if Vodafone PT mobile IP ranges are being aggressive rate-limited or blocked?

Thanks!

Castanhola

[generaldarian]

I believe that I have the exact same issue in Switzerland. I didn't look into it as much as you did, but very often I cannot access the website via my Swiss mobile network (Sunrise)... but turning airplane mode on/off again makes it work again.

[avij]

Hi, sorry for the late reply. Please see viewtopic.php?t=57926 for information and instructions.

Specifically for Vodafone PT, I sent them an abuse report on 2.8. saying that there are 2375 IP addresses from Vodafone PT on our blocklist. It would be up to them to contact the relevant customers to weed out the compromised routers etc. from their customers. With that many compromised devices on their network it is no surprise there is some collateral damage.

If you could get an IPv6 address you wouldn't need to worry about CGNAT and sharing that public IP address with other Vodafone PT users.

Edit: When you access EBT using your phone you may be using IPv6. That's why using EBT works on your phone but not on the tethered device.