On some STC Afaq DSL connections you may encounter an error message on some websites combined with a lot of DSL disconnections. The error is:
Access Denied (license_expired)
A license has expired on the Proxy, and your request is not permitted: “The SGOS license has expired”. A new license must be obtained.
For assistance, contact your network support team.
image removed by request of owner
SGOS is a proxy server operating system by Blue Coat Systems. STC is supposed to be the leading telecommunications and Internet company in Saudi Arabia and a company of that scale shouldn’t allow important software such as SGOS to expire.
That image was found while searching for stc.com.sa on google images.
The tinyurl untiny bookmarlet that we talked about was now updated. The new update was a response to a change in the Saudi Arabia Internet block of tinyurl.
You can get it here, just drag the “UnTiny” link to your bookmark toolbar. You can still resolve a tinyurl manually by visiting untiny.
Strange problems are happening with some STC AFAQ DSL Shamil servers. It used to happen on some websites depending on your IP address. But now there is a problem with all HTTP connections on some of STC servers. You can still ping but no HTTP access.
Check your IP address from your DSL modem admin page or simply visit this website (but since you are offline then this site will be useless). If your IP address is one of the following: 94.99.119.* / 94.99.22.* / 94.99.117.* (there are others but those are the ones that I confirmed) simply disconnect and reconnect and you will get a new IP address. I have confirmed that the following IP addresses work: 77.31.250.* / 77.30.90.* / 94.97.48.*.
STC as usual isn’t helping. How can you tell them that some of their proxy servers (I assume) are broken. Just keep those IP numbers in mind.
tinyurl.com, a long url shortening service, has been blocked in Saudi Arabia for a very long long time. Internet.gov.sa and CITC did not give a real reason for blocking it. Even though many alternatives are available and not blocked.
Currently there are 2 methods of bypassing the block: using untiny.me, a short url parser developed by Saleh Al-Zaid or altering the url from http://tinyurl to https://tinyurl.
Abdullah has made a bookmarklet (javascript bookmark) for bypassing the block on tinyurl using the https method which can be found here. Just drag the bookmarklet to your bookmark toolbar in your browser.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t petition for tinyurl unblock. To do so fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.