I'm new to Fedora and running Fedora 44 KDE on a Dell Precision 5570. Whenever I run `sudo dnf upgrade --refresh`, the process fails while trying to download the OpenH264 package from ciscobinary.openh264.org. The error reports that the hostname cannot be resolved, and `nslookup` returns `REFUSED` through the local resolver at 127.0.0.53. Other repositories, including Fedora, RPM Fusion, Brave, and VS Code, work normally, so the issue seems limited to the Cisco OpenH264 download server. Interestingly, the package downloaded successfully after switching from my home Wi-Fi to my phone's hotspot. Why would one network block or fail to resolve this particular repository while the other works? Is this caused by DNS, a temporary server problem, or regional restrictions?
1 Answer
This is a known issue with the Cisco OpenH264 hosting service. The server appears to geoblock some IP ranges, so connections from certain countries or providers may be refused. That explains why your normal Wi-Fi failed while your phone hotspot worked: the two connections use different public IP addresses and may exit through different regions or DNS infrastructure. It is not necessarily a problem with Fedora or your laptop.
That makes sense. Switching networks changed the public IP, so the Cisco server treated the hotspot connection differently even though everything else on my system stayed the same.