All access to ring.com, either from a browser or the Android app, are now returning a 406 with the text not acceptable. Connecting through a proxy has the system working as expected.
Things I have done:
Tried a different browser, behavior persists in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox
Cleared cookies and cache
Tested in normal and incognito/private mode
All attempts result in not acceptable if they originate from my home IP (Comcast cable modem). No VPN is present, but I do have access to a VPN and if I turn that on (thus changing my originating IP), everything works as expected.
Why is ring.com blacklisting Comcast cable modem IPs?
From everything I’ve read, not acceptable is what you see when ring decides to blacklist your originating IP. I’ve power cycled my modem, but Comcast tends not to issue new IPs on power cycle, and didn’t, and thus it didn’t fix the problem.
This is not my network setup, and blaming the user for a server side problem isn’t a great way to handle things.
Tied chat support, they eventually gave up and told me I needed to call. I called, waited on hold while listening to ads for more ring.com services that aren’t going to work, and eventually got in touch with a rep. Explained my situation and then they hung up on me.
Spent an hour or so on the phone, got escalated a couple times, and then the issue was being taken to the technical team offline. I haven’t heard back, but everything is now working with no changes on my side (because, as I said above, it wasn’t a “my side” problem).
If Ring is going to be blacklisting consumer ISP IP ranges, they need to get a system together that can deal with what happens when they mistakenly blacklist someone. Up until the last technical representative, nobody had ever heard of that happening. A quick search of the forums here shows this isn’t that unusual, and Ring would do well do be able to deal with the problems that their systems intentionally create for their paying customers.
Replying here because it’s the most recent post I could find with this issue. I had the same problem in November 2021 that resolved itself, then broke again several months later. It is not a client side issue. It’s very simple to prove: just get a new IP address. You can use a VPN. If your public IP is DHCP-based, you can trigger a new IP by plugging in a different device or cloning the MAC. Granted you shouldn’t need to do any of this, but it will clearly show that Ring has some kind of filtering going on. I’m not sure “blacklisting” is the technically correct term because cameras and notifications continue to work fine. But this issue is absolutely under Ring’s control. There is nothing we can do as customers, nor our ISP’s can do other than get a new IP address.
This incident already had me on the fence about renewing, the recent price increase makes that decision easy. My security camera is mine, locking me out randomly and then jacking the price up is all the motivation I needed to go find a solution that I buy and then belongs to me.