| ----------------------------------------
Dish Network STB Health bullshit
February 11th, 2019
----------------------------------------
So, I have two Dish Network XiP 913 "Hopper with Sling" satellite
receivers, and a pair of their thin-client receivers, the XiP 110 "Joey
1.0"... One of the Hopper receivers is in the living room and it's
typically used by my stepdad... the first Joey receiver is in mom's
room... The second Hopper receiver is in my room and the final Joey
receiver is in my brothers room... (I also have a Dish VIP211Z which I
use in a popup camper trailer, it's the most awesome receiver ever made,
and if you are a casual TV viewer, it is absolutely the one you should
get, full-stop.)
Me and my brother are not interested in any of the silly internet
functions that the satellite receivers have, if we want to watch
youtube, we just hop on our computers or cell phones... We're also
really not interested in mum's or dad's recorded programs, to this end
we installed isolators (part # 190507) to stop our receivers from
accessing mum's + dad's.
The problem... stepdad likes the youtube crap on his receiver, so his is
internet connected, he also will not allow the satellite dish to be
placed in an optimal location, instead it is where his crummy DirecTV
(yuck) dish used to be... As such, the signal is not as strong as it
should be, but it is certainly usable (I'd estimate at least 99.9%
reliability)... Unfortunately with that signal not being up to Dish's
local standards, and stepdad's receiver being internet connected, the
damn thing phones home to Dish, and they invariably call my phone, I
don't answer (because they only call while I am asleep or at work,
naturally!), and they won't leave a voicemail.......... on the extremely
rare occasion that I do get to answer, I explain to the person that,
yes, the signal is weak for the area, but I do not want them to send
anyone out to fix it because it would require moving the dish, which
stepdad is unwilling to do, and more importantly, the damn thing works
fine with the weak signal; I ask them not to call, I will call them if I
have an issue, and that keeps them away for a month... But next month
they're back with a vengence, calling 3 or 4 times a day with no
voicemail. argh.
Since the Dish hounds won't leave me alone, but stepdad wants youtube on
his box, I've decided to try and get the box to stop phoning home...
After letting a packet capture run all day, I've found some interesting
hosts to try to block via my local DNS server, unbound... I set my
pfsense box to force/redirect all DNS quries to unbound too, because
these Dish boxes will happily try to query Google DNS (8.8.8.8+8.8.4.4)
in addition to DHCP supplied DNS servers.
Here's what I am trying out now:
server:
#Satellite box
local-zone: "grasshopper-analytics.dishanywhere.com" redirect
local-zone: "grasshopper-netra-upload.dishanywhere.com" redirect
local-zone: "grasshopper-stb-statereport.dishanywhere.com" redirect
local-zone: "logstash-dev.dishtechbeta.us" redirect
local-zone: "pingback.sling.com" redirect
local-zone: "stbanalyticschy.echostarbeta.com" redirect
local-zone: "stbanalyticspvm.echostarbeta.com" redirect
local-zone: "vmeasureul.dishaccess.tv" redirect
This configuration causes unbound to immediately reply to clients
reqesting these domains with a no answer reply... that is, a reply which
is not an error, but does not contain any records (such as A or AAAA).
I hope this gets the hounds off of my back. :)
---------------------------------------- |