VPNs after net neutrality

M

manny1222

Gawd
Joined
Mar 11, 2012
Messages
732
So with net neutrality gone, are VPNs still useful? Can't the ISP just block the IP address if they want you to see only their approved/partner content?
 
manny1222 said:
So with net neutrality gone, are VPNs still useful? Can't the ISP just block the IP address if they want you to see only their approved/partner content?
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Not sure exactly what you are asking here? The ISP would need to block your connection to the VPN provider. Once you create that VPN, where you go can't easily be determined by the ISP because technically the connection is being made on the side of the VPN provider and routed through your tunnel to you.
 
If China can't block VPNs, or at least has a difficult time doing so, your ISP isn't going to. Not to mention, you actually need to read what Net Neutrality was all about, but that's SoapBox material, so I'm going to bother posting it here.
 
Excuse my ignorance, but isnt the ISP going to see the VPN's IP instead of yours? What stops them from blocking known VPN IPs, or even blocking the VPN IP that your account is showing up as, since its not the one they are assigning you?
 
manny1222 said:
Excuse my ignorance, but isnt the ISP going to see the VPN's IP instead of yours? What stops them from blocking known VPN IPs, or even blocking the VPN IP that your account is showing up as, since its not the one they are assigning you?
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Without making political comments, my answer is going to be short. Your ISP isn't going to be blocking a VPN and if they try, there are lots of ways to get around, mainly, good luck blocking 443.
 
for god sakes....

We had NO net neutrality for like 2 decades before the last like 2 whopping years.

Did VPNs not work before ... ok then ... good god ... you guys act like NN being removed is the end of all energy in the universe.
 
Depends on the TOS and if they are legally enforceable. For the ISP to block VPNs, they are basically admitting they are monitoring and inspecting your electronic communications. That could put them in a precarious legal situation depending on jurisdiction. Most have better things to do. Is it possible one will try, sure. But there are a LOT of wealthy corporations that use VPNs as part of their security policies for their employees working out of the office.
 
tangoseal said:
for god sakes....

We had NO net neutrality for like 2 decades before the last like 2 whopping years.

Did VPNs not work before ... ok then ... good god ... you guys act like NN being removed is the end of all energy in the universe.
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You aren't wrong, but then again we got NN when we did because the ISPs were starting to dick around with things. They've been salivating for a couple years now over what they want to do, so it's not an unreasonable fear I feel.
 
grasshoppa said:
You aren't wrong, but then again we got NN when we did because the ISPs were starting to dick around with things. They've been salivating for a couple years now over what they want to do, so it's not an unreasonable fear I feel.
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Net Neutrality is about government control over the internet.

https://fee.org/articles/net-neutrality-is-about-government-control-of-the-internet/

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/econ...fcc-is-right-to-toss-out-net-neutrality-rules

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436807/net-neutrality-government-control-your-internet-service

That's going to be my last post about this here since this has gone political and should be in SoapBox.
 
manny1222 said:
Excuse my ignorance, but isnt the ISP going to see the VPN's IP instead of yours? What stops them from blocking known VPN IPs, or even blocking the VPN IP that your account is showing up as, since its not the one they are assigning you?
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Not necessarily. It depends on where the endpoint for your VPN resides. For instance many people use VPNs in other countries that have laws preventing monitoring of traffic. I think the best way to answer your question is to try and simply explain what a VPN is and how it works (this is basic and not exact, its just an somewhat high level view).

PC (Yours): sends auth request to VPN server through ISP Gateway in clear text
ISP GW: Forwards request to VPN server in clear text
VPN Server: receives auth request, verifies, creates tunnel (there is some back and forth here between your system and the VPN server at this point in clear text)
PC: creates https request for bigboobies.com, request packet gets encrypted using the tunnel.
ISP: Sees encrypted traffic heading to VPN server, forwards it
VPN Server: Decrypts packet, sess https request for bigboobies.com and forwards request
VPN Server: Gets response from bigboobies.com and encrypts it using tunnel sending it back to PC.
ISP: Receives encrypted packet from VPN server heading to PC, forwards it.
PC: decrypts packet, opens https information to view page contents.

Once a VPN tunnel is established you are sending all your information through it and using the VPN server as a proxy server. So the ISP sees only that encrypted traffic is going between you and the VPN server, it does not see what is in the encrypted traffic.

The only way the ISP would know is if your VPN server company used the same ISP that you do. Then it could see the traffic between the VPN server and bigboobies.com and see the encrypted traffic between the VPN server and you, correlate the timestamps and make an educated guess that you are going to bigboobies.com through the VPN server.

Does that make more sense now?

Net Neutrality only plays a peripheral role in this situation in that the ISP may decided to throttle traffic to the VPN server. But even with Title II the ISP could use valid excuses why they would block or throttle traffic to a VPN server. So removing Title II does not really directly affect this particular situation.
 
NoOther said:
Not necessarily. It depends on where the endpoint for your VPN resides. For instance many people use VPNs in other countries that have laws preventing monitoring of traffic. I think the best way to answer your question is to try and simply explain what a VPN is and how it works (this is basic and not exact, its just an somewhat high level view).

PC (Yours): sends auth request to VPN server through ISP Gateway in clear text
ISP GW: Forwards request to VPN server in clear text
VPN Server: receives auth request, verifies, creates tunnel (there is some back and forth here between your system and the VPN server at this point in clear text)
PC: creates https request for bigboobies.com, request packet gets encrypted using the tunnel.
ISP: Sees encrypted traffic heading to VPN server, forwards it
VPN Server: Decrypts packet, sess https request for bigboobies.com and forwards request
VPN Server: Gets response from bigboobies.com and encrypts it using tunnel sending it back to PC.
ISP: Receives encrypted packet from VPN server heading to PC, forwards it.
PC: decrypts packet, opens https information to view page contents.

Once a VPN tunnel is established you are sending all your information through it and using the VPN server as a proxy server. So the ISP sees only that encrypted traffic is going between you and the VPN server, it does not see what is in the encrypted traffic.

The only way the ISP would know is if your VPN server company used the same ISP that you do. Then it could see the traffic between the VPN server and bigboobies.com and see the encrypted traffic between the VPN server and you, correlate the timestamps and make an educated guess that you are going to bigboobies.com through the VPN server.

Does that make more sense now?

Net Neutrality only plays a peripheral role in this situation in that the ISP may decided to throttle traffic to the VPN server. But even with Title II the ISP could use valid excuses why they would block or throttle traffic to a VPN server. So removing Title II does not really directly affect this particular situation.
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Thanks for the great explanation without making it political (unlike others).
So hypothetically if comcast decides to throttle netflix, because they buy blockbuster, would using a VPN be able to get around that?
This is the question i should've asked in the OP, as i saw the deal on PIA VPN in the hot deals section and wondered if its something i should look into. Wasn't looking to start a political war.
 
manny1222 said:
Thanks for the great explanation without making it political (unlike others).
So hypothetically if comcast decides to throttle netflix, because they buy blockbuster, would using a VPN be able to get around that?
This is the question i should've asked in the OP, as i saw the deal on PIA VPN in the hot deals section and wondered if its something i should look into. Wasn't looking to start a political war.
Click to expand...
Yes it would
 
manny1222 said:
Thanks for the great explanation without making it political (unlike others).
So hypothetically if comcast decides to throttle netflix, because they buy blockbuster, would using a VPN be able to get around that?
This is the question i should've asked in the OP, as i saw the deal on PIA VPN in the hot deals section and wondered if its something i should look into. Wasn't looking to start a political war.
Click to expand...

Personally I did not read anything political in your statement.

dmolter said:
Yes it would
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Not exactly. It depends on a number of things really.

First it depends on whether Comcast will allow VPN traffic across their network, or rather who they will allow to establish VPNs across their traffic. They could declare that residential service will not allow VPN traffic. That is actually less outrageous for them to do then to declare they are going to completely block Netflix. Contrary to what Farva said it isn't especially difficult to block VPNs. What is difficult is only blocking certain VPN traffic. After all if you wanted to block all VPNs, you just would filter all encrypted traffic. You can even filter upon some encrypted types. You can also filter upon source and destination headers in some encrypted traffic.

Second it depends on where your VPN server resides. If it resides within Comcast's control or another partner's control, then the VPN server would also likely be blocked from using Netflix. Also Comcast may make certain agreements with other providers to also block that content. So the important step here is to choose the appropriate VPN server that is out of Comcast's reach.

Third, just because you can use the VPN does not mean that it will provide you the appropriate speed/latency to stream services. Oftentimes using a VPN greatly reduces your speed/latency because of the overhead of encrypting traffic and the limitations of the VPN infrastructure. It may be that the quality of the connection is not good enough for streaming.

Sooo.....

What I would suggest is asking for a trial period of the VPN service and see if it provides the level of service you need to stream Netflix content if you are worried about losing it, or if you are just curious about if it will work. But if your concern is specifically about Comcast, I would make sure the VPN service is not located in an area that Comcast controls and/or has no rules or agreements with Comcast to filter traffic (Some VPN services will filter traffic themselves according to their own policies).
 
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