Facebook pictures & video being blocked???

[radar2000]

Hi there.

Since this past Sunday, I've noticed that my Facebook news-feed pictures and video are not showing up. I've confirmed this when using Facebook at home on my iPads, iPhones and PC's. I also confirmed this with my wife's Facebook account.

When using my iPhone, if I turn off the WiFi and use my LTE service, I can see the Facebook pictures and videos again.

The router that we are using is the Asus RT-AC87U running on the latest Merlin firmware. Both ISP modem and Asus router have been rebooted several times with no affect.

Is it possible that my local ISP (Rogers) is blocking my Facebook pictures / video? Or could this be something that my router is blocking without me knowing?

All of our other apps/programs/social media sites are functioning as per usual. Only Facebook seems to be having these issues.

Any suggestions/recommendations on how to resolve this issue would be appreciated.

I've reported this issue to Facebook already and will be contacting our ISP to see if they are aware of this issue.

Thank you.

 

[radar2000]

I just spoke with my ISP's tech support and they are not showing any known issues on their end.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers!

 

[radar2000]

I'm thinking of performing a factory reset to see if this does anything. Thoughts?

 

[Xentrk]

What country are you living in? The Thailand Government was having Facebook block content recently.
The next day, the Government said they rescinded the order. But for several days, it was still being blocked.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/...-block-facebook-pages-it-says-insult-monarchy

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...for-facebook-to-remove-illicit-content-passes

What happens when you do a nslookup facebook.com from a windows command prompt or router command line? Please post the output.

 

[radar2000]

Thanks for your response @Xentrk.

I'm located in Canada in the Toronto area.

I'll give that a try when I get home.

As for an update...

Last night I performed a factory reset with the same results. I then tried to revert back to a previous Merlin firmware version and the results were the same.

I then tried accessing Facebook directly from my ISP's (Rogers) modems WiFi and after a few tries at refreshing Facebook from my iPad, I was slowly getting Facebook pictures and video to appear again. I found it strange that using my ISP's modems WiFi directly vs. using my Asus routers WiFi, I have access to my Facebook pictures and video like before.

A couple of observations:

- I have no issues using my Facebook account at work...both using my iPhone, iPad and laptop.
- When I try to access Facebook from my laptops, it first times out and says that it was taking long to reach facebook.com...then it finally loads but with no pictures or video.

It's confirmed that this issue only happens when I get home and access Facebook using my network. Again, when I log into Facebook or access Facebook through my apps, I see all of the templates and wording/comments fine, just the pictures and video don't appear...and I see that the app or page is spinning away trying to download endlessly.

I welcome any additional suggestion/recommendations.

Thanks for the continued support.

Cheers!

 

[Xentrk]

Thanks for your response @Xentrk.

I'm located in Canada in the Toronto area.

I'll give that a try when I get home.

As for an update...

Last night I performed a factory reset with the same results. I then tried to revert back to a previous Merlin firmware version and the results were the same.

I then tried accessing Facebook directly from my ISP's (Rogers) modems WiFi and after a few tries at refreshing Facebook from my iPad, I was slowly getting Facebook pictures and video to appear again. I found it strange that using my ISP's modems WiFi directly vs. using my Asus routers WiFi, I have access to my Facebook pictures and video like before.

A couple of observations:

- I have no issues using my Facebook account at work...both using my iPhone, iPad and laptop.
- When I try to access Facebook from my laptops, it first times out and says that it was taking long to reach facebook.com...then it finally loads but with no pictures or video.

It's confirmed that this issue only happens when I get home and access Facebook using my network. Again, when I log into Facebook or access Facebook through my apps, I see all of the templates and wording/comments fine, just the pictures and video don't appear...and I see that the app or page is spinning away trying to download endlessly.

I welcome any additional suggestion/recommendations.

Thanks for the continued support.

Cheers!

I highly doubt it is government censorship then

Who do you use for your DNS Servers? Do you use your ISPs? You can try opendns dns servers 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 or google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 to see if that fixes the issue. You can see what your router/ISP is using by going to a browser ipleak.net web site.

Using the ipleak.net website, I found out my ISP hi-jacks my DNS with their own when I use googles DNS servers. But not when I use my VPN providers DNS. Some people use DNSCrypt feature to prevent such an issue which you can read about here
https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Secure-DNS-queries-using-DNSCrypt

To set DNS in ASUS Merlin, go to WAN tab, set Connect to DNS Server automatically to NO, and specify the DNS servers in the two fields below.

 

[radar2000]

Thanks @Xentrk.

I did try using the Google dns last night, but that didn't solve the issue.

Thanks for the advice on the ipleak.net...I'll give that and opendns a try and will report back.

Cheers!

 

[Xentrk]

A google search of "facebook videos and pictures not loading" returns a lot of hits. One video I watched suggested making sure IPv6 is turned off on the client.
1. Open Network and Sharing Center
2. Click on wifi connection
3. Click on properties
4. Unclick Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
5. Close everything.

There are many more ideas listed. This was just one of them.

 

[radar2000]

Thanks @Xentrk for your continued support.

I tried turning off IPv6 but still no images and video from Facebook.

Here's the results of the nslookup facebook.com...

Server: RT-AC87U-00F8
Address: 192.168.1.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: facebook.com
Addresses: 2a03:2880:f127:83:face:b00c:0:25de
157.240.2.35

I also tried the dsnflush but still the same results.

I did review the google search results but nothing definitive came up as a solution.

Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers!

 

[Xentrk]

Thanks @Xentrk for your continued support.

I tried turning off IPv6 but still no images and video from Facebook.

Here's the results of the nslookup facebook.com...

Server: RT-AC87U-00F8
Address: 192.168.1.1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: facebook.com
Addresses: 2a03:2880:f127:83:face:b00c:0:25de
157.240.2.35

I also tried the dsnflush but still the same results.

I did review the google search results but nothing definitive came up as a solution.

Any further suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers!

The nslookup confirms you are reaching the facebook website. You can issue a ping 157.240.2.35 command to see the response time. If the nslookup had returned an ip of 127.0.0.1, that would mean facebook.com was being blocked at the router level as 127.0.0.1 is the loop back ip address used by the router. It is videos and pics on FB slow loading that is the issue from your description.

Unfortunately, I am out of ideas at this point. Here is a read that may help:
https://www.dailytut.com/social-networking/fix-facebook-video-slow-loading-problem.html

I see the some say switching to chrome helped. Others switched from chrome to opera. Using DNS 4.2.2 3 and 4.2.2.4. Clearing browser cache. One video says to use a software called dns jumper to determine the best dns servers to use. I am surprised by the number of people complaining about the issue and the wide variety of solutions. I wonder if FB is growing too fast.

Since it appears to happen only at your home network, it still could be a config at home rather than a setting on the client. You may want to find out what DNS your work place uses and try those servers. I wish I had more ideas. If you find out what it is, please post back here.

 

[KevTech]

Are you using AiProtection on the Asus router?

If so try turning it off.

 

[gp-se]

the ISP (Rogers) has confirmed this is a local CMTS issue and is working on a fix.

 

[Wowbagg3r]

I'm in Sweden and I have the same problem ever since flashing my two AC68U:s to Merlin 380.66_4 Not only is Facebook erratic, I'm having issues with many (but not all) websites that direct to SSL by default.

I have two different AC68U:s at two separate locations with two different ISP:s. Both AC68:s are behind other routers in bridge mode. One is a 120 Mbps cable connection and the other is a ~25 Mbps 4G link. The problem exists on both my networks ever since flashing the new firmware, on multiple PC:s and iPads.
I've tried different DNS-servers to no avail. The only thing that works is if I bypass all traffic through a remote VPN service.

 

[Xentrk]

I'm in Sweden and I have the same problem ever since flashing my two AC68U:s to Merlin 380.66_4 Not only is Facebook erratic, I'm having issues with many (but not all) websites that direct to SSL by default.

I have two different AC68U:s at two separate locations with two different ISP:s. Both AC68:s are behind other routers in bridge mode. One is a 120 Mbps cable connection and the other is a ~25 Mbps 4G link. The problem exists on both my networks ever since flashing the new firmware, on multiple PC:s and iPads.
I've tried different DNS-servers to no avail. The only thing that works is if I bypass all traffic through a remote VPN service.

What firmware release did you flash from?

Make sure air time fairness is turned off.

If you still have issues and to rule out a 380.66_4 issue, please try a factory reset and reenter settings manually or use the NVRAM backup and restore utility.

 

[Wowbagg3r]

What firmware release did you flash from?

Make sure air time fairness is turned off.

If you still have issues and to rule out a 380.66_4 issue, please try a factory reset and reenter settings manually or use the NVRAM backup and restore utility.

I flashed from 380.66_2, but now I think I may have solved it:

I've used DNS-based filtering with "Norton Connect Safe" and one of the first things I tried was changing to Comodo or Yandex, and then disabling filtering altogether. It didn't help. But now after disabling the service again, this time also flushing the DNS cache on my PC it seems to be fine.

Maybe radar2000's problem also has something to do with DNS-filtering?

 

[gp-se]

I flashed from 380.66_2, but now I think I may have solved it:

I've used DNS-based filtering with "Norton Connect Safe" and one of the first things I tried was changing to Comodo or Yandex, and then disabling filtering altogether. It didn't help. But now after disabling the service again, this time also flushing the DNS cache on my PC it seems to be fine.

Maybe radar2000's problem also has something to do with DNS-filtering?

radar2000's problem was caused by the ISP and a misconfiguration affecting a local CMTS, the issue has been resolved.