All requests to ROBLOX from Google Cloud Platform-associated addresses fail

Hi! We’ve been having trouble connecting to any *.roblox.com address from Google Compute Engine instances. The problem occurs even across various regions and IP addresses. This does not seem to be the case with AWS EC2 instances on any region, however, so we’re assuming it’s not some sort of massive block on cloud hosts and that there might be something stranger going on.

$ curl www.roblox.com
curl: (7) Failed to connect to www.roblox.com port 80: No route to host
$ wget www.roblox.com
--2016-07-25 09:05:47--  http://www.roblox.com/
Resolving www.roblox.com (www.roblox.com)... 8.42.96.42
Connecting to www.roblox.com (www.roblox.com)|8.42.96.42|:80... failed: No route to host.
$ ping www.roblox.com -c 1
PING www.roblox.com (8.42.96.30) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 128.177.133.222 icmp_seq=1 Packet filtered

--- www.roblox.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 0 received, +1 errors, 100% packet loss, time 0ms
$ sudo traceroute www.roblox.com -I -A
traceroute to www.roblox.com (8.42.96.42), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  209.85.244.82 (209.85.244.82) [AS15169]  11.373 ms  11.372 ms  11.353 ms
 3  72.14.233.69 (72.14.233.69) [AS15169]  11.369 ms  11.386 ms  11.592 ms
 4  209.85.254.129 (209.85.254.129) [AS15169]  11.019 ms  11.028 ms  11.028 ms
 5  * * *
 6  128.177.133.222 (128.177.133.222) [AS3557]  11.914 ms !X  11.585 ms !X  11.574 ms !X
$ sudo traceroute www.roblox.com -T -A
traceroute to www.roblox.com (8.42.96.42), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  216.239.43.216 (216.239.43.216) [AS15169]  1.167 ms 216.239.41.59 (216.239.41.59) [AS15169]  1.024 ms *
 2  216.239.47.38 (216.239.47.38) [AS15169]  11.057 ms 216.239.47.102 (216.239.47.102) [AS15169]  10.541 ms 209.85.244.208 (209.85.244.208) [AS15169]  10.543 ms
 3  72.14.233.69 (72.14.233.69) [AS15169]  11.053 ms 72.14.237.132 (72.14.237.132) [AS15169]  11.356 ms 72.14.237.131 (72.14.237.131) [AS15169]  11.314 ms
 4  209.85.143.187 (209.85.143.187) [AS15169]  10.526 ms 209.85.143.155 (209.85.143.155) [AS15169]  10.684 ms 209.85.254.129 (209.85.254.129) [AS15169]  10.844 ms
 5  * * *
 6  128.177.133.222 (128.177.133.222) [AS3557]  11.690 ms !X  11.384 ms !X  11.443 ms !X
$ traceroute www.roblox.com -A
traceroute to www.roblox.com (8.42.96.42), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  216.239.46.190 (216.239.46.190) [AS15169]  1.121 ms 216.239.43.218 (216.239.43.218) [AS15169]  1.338 ms 216.239.43.216 (216.239.43.216) [AS15169]  1.337 ms
 2  216.239.47.102 (216.239.47.102) [AS15169]  10.489 ms 209.85.247.5 (209.85.247.5) [AS15169]  10.894 ms 216.239.47.120 (216.239.47.120) [AS15169]  10.394 ms
 3  216.239.50.235 (216.239.50.235) [AS15169]  11.002 ms 72.14.237.132 (72.14.237.132) [AS15169]  11.276 ms  11.266 ms
 4  209.85.143.155 (209.85.143.155) [AS15169]  10.692 ms 209.85.143.187 (209.85.143.187) [AS15169]  10.631 ms 209.85.143.155 (209.85.143.155) [AS15169]  10.675 ms
 5  * * *
 6  * * *
 7  * * *
 8  216.239.43.218 (216.239.43.218) [AS15169]  1.103 ms * *
 9  216.239.47.44 (216.239.47.44) [AS15169]  10.897 ms 216.239.47.102 (216.239.47.102) [AS15169]  54.222 ms 209.85.244.82 (209.85.244.82) [AS15169]  10.477 ms
10  72.14.232.163 (72.14.232.163) [AS15169]  11.140 ms 209.85.243.172 (209.85.243.172) [AS15169]  10.352 ms 209.85.143.60 (209.85.143.60) [AS15169]  10.549 ms
11  209.85.254.121 (209.85.254.121) [AS15169]  10.508 ms 209.85.254.129 (209.85.254.129) [AS15169]  10.997 ms  10.693 ms
12  * * *
13  * * *
14  * * *
15  * * *
16  * * *
17  * * *
18  * * *
19  * * *
20  * * *
21  * * *
22  * * *
23  * * *
24  * * *
25  * * *
26  * * *
27  * * *
28  * * *
29  * * *
30  * * *

Is this a ROBLOX or Google-side block, or is there a different problem going on?

2 Likes

For some reason *.roblox.com never resolves to 69.172.201.47 (which seems to work given a host header!) but only to the 8.42.96.* range, which for some reason always blocks requests from Google’s network (but not others)!

Will use 69.172.201.47 with a manual host header for now as a workaround.

1 Like

To add on, I used my one complimentary support ticket with Google on this issue and they have confirmed that there are no Google side blocks and that it is something on ROBLOX side blocking them. My workaround was to run a bouncer server on AWS and used that server to pull whatever I need from ROBLOX and my Google system just pulls from my bouncer server