IP blocking
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
IP blocking is the banning, by a website, mailserver, or other Internet server, of outside connections from certain IP addresses or ranges of them, the intention of this being to keep out people who are judged as hostile or undesirable.
One such example of this is the July 2003 decision by techfocus.org to ban the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from its website for various abuses by those two organisations of the content on it.[1]
On an Internet forum an IP ban is often used as a last resort to prevent a disruptive member from participating, though a warning and/or account ban may be used first.
IP banning is used by Indymedia administrators. It has been alleged that they abuse that power to exclude points of view which differ from that of administrators.
Wikipedia also uses blocking as one of its strategies for dealing with vandalism. See: Wikipedia:Blocking policy.
IP banning is commonly used on computer servers to protect against brute force attacks. Both companies and schools offering remote user access, and people wanting to access their home computers from remote locations, use Linux programs such as DenyHosts or Fail2ban for protection from unauthorized access while allowing permitted remote access.
IP banning is also used to limit the syndication of content to a specific region. To achieve this IP-adresses are mapped to the countries they have been assigned to.
