topic Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket in Broadband

Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

sedur — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:57:49 GMT

I have found that Sky appear to be blocking SSH communications to Bitbucket.org.
The workaround is to use a VPN service, which immediately resolved the slow/broken/blocked traffic I was seeing when attempting to use git pull/push/fetch via an SSH connection.
Using the traceroute feature, it appears that the blocking is at point 14, which is way after my sky router.
I also received lots of messages about 'broken pipe' and 'blocked by administration'.

What I found particularly confusing is that at the time I was experiencing the connectivity issues, the service was not blocked for communications to github.

Either way, it is difficult to believe that the fault is with bitbucket, when usign a VPN allowed traffic to flow normally once more.
This is very dissapointing if Sky have chosen to block or throttle traffic in this way.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

Chrisee — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:14:22 GMT

@sedur not blocked for my Sky connection. Most likely cause is the setting for Sky Broadband Shield which you can control see https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-broadband-shield-start

As a general rule only sites subject to a UK court order will be blocked if Sky started doing otherwise Ofcom wiuld come knocking.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

thmnrtn — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:42:29 GMT

I'm also experiencing similar issues pushing and pulling from bitbucket. Its intermittent in that largely it doesn't work failing with "client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe" type errors but will occasionally succeed.

As reported by @sedur connecting to a VPN immedietely resolved the issue which indicates the problem relates to the way my Sky ISP is processing the traffic.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

TimmyBGood — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:08:56 GMT

@Chrisee wrote:

not blocked for my Sky connection.

Access over Secure SHell would be different to the website resolving though, and not testable without Bitbucket account credentials.

@sedur @CurtisG @thmnrtn

Almost certainly something which will need to be addressed by Sky netops: chances are the contact centre people won't have any notion what that is.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

CurtisG — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:49:19 GMT

Yep, exact same issue on my end

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

sedur — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:17:35 GMT

Thanks @TimmyBGood!
Any ideas how this gets progressed to Sky Netops?
I assume I need to go back to the callcentre and try to get them to evelvate

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

joeprisk — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:39:08 GMT

Same issue here since the past week, anyone had any luck with getting this resolved with sky?

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

joeprisk — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:29:12 GMT

@sedur I've got a work around for bitbucket using alternate ssh host altssh.bitbucket.org:443

Just update your ~/.ssh/config with the following

Host bitbucket.org Hostname altssh.bitbucket.org Port 443

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

FBZ — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:50:56 GMT

Same here - thought i was going insane while trying to reconfigure my mac's networking settings to get to the bottom of it

Probably works 1/20 times, but as most projects have sub-modules thats blocking every git pull/push for me.

The altssh fix seemed to work with command-line git, but GitKraken (configured to use command-line git) doesnt seem like it (or at least not when using submodules) 😞

Got broadband shield disabled on my connection so it's not that.

Looks like i'm hot-spotting off my mobile phone for the time being then 😭

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

TimmyBGood — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:36:06 GMT

@sedur @FBZ @joeprisk @CurtisG @thmnrtn

I've put a request into the Superuser forum to ask if our Sky staff contacts there could draw the issue to the attention of Network Operations directly: this is in the hope it means you don't have to try and explain the situation to frontline 'support' which I think we can reasonably anticipate wouldn't be entirely straightforward ; )

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

sedur — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:57:06 GMT

Thank you @TimmyBGood

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

sedur — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:57:21 GMT

Thanks Joe, I'll try this tomorrow

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

domabbott92 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 19:27:22 GMT

Same issue here! Kept getting the "client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe" on my Sky wifi but was working on mobile data.

I've just tried @joeprisk fix and it seems to consistently be working now. Thanks Joe!

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

notdavethen — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:13:53 GMT

I went through this with Atlassian support and they were confident problem was Sky side.

Workaround from @joeprisk works well.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

aelst+the+goblin — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:07:53 GMT

glad I found this. I'm still experiencing the same today.

My pushes eventually work after trying about 3-4 times.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

KevNewMedia — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:29:53 GMT

Hi Everyone

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and thank you for tagging me @TimmyBGood

I've escalated the details to our support teams and will update this thread as soon as we have more information.

I'm going to mark this post as the current answer, so that everyone has the most up-to-date information.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

ExtraNerdy — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:14:44 GMT

Thanks for this - I've been stumped all week and retrying endlessly.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

KevNewMedia — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:32:34 GMT

Hi @sedur @ExtraNerdy @aelst+the+goblin @notdavethen @domabbott92

Thanks for your patience whilst we worked through this problem.

Our engineers have been working on the problem and have implemented a change. Can you check to see whether this has worked for you, please?

I'm going to mark this post as the current answer, so that everyone has the most up-to-date information.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

ExtraNerdy — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:40:22 GMT

@KevNewMedia

seems to be better now, working without override.

Any chance of a post-incident review - blocking a pretty standard business service gives me concerns if I'm honest.

Re: Sky blocking traffic to bitbucket

KevNewMedia — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:49:23 GMT

@ExtraNerdy wrote:

@KevNewMedia

seems to be better now, working without override.

Any chance of a post-incident review - blocking a pretty standard business service gives me concerns if I'm honest.

Thank you for the quick reply and confirming that it's working for you @ExtraNerdy!

I'm afraid we aren't able to share that information.