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Comment by iamben | Hacker News Reader

This article is very light on the details, but the fact that someone has actually gone ahead and done this will mean other leaders / politicians will now be thinking - "oh right, this is actually something we may be able to do."

Another few feet down that slippery slope.

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> the fact that someone has actually gone ahead and done this[...]

Well it's not exactly a novel idea. China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Turkey and others have implemented bans or heavy restrictions for quite some time now.

I'm sure it's coming to the US to ensure that subscribers aren't avoiding ISP rate limits.

I saw an article from about 15 years ago that said Comcast blocked VPNs for a few weeks as a "test". Apparently the test was stopped because a large amount of businesses complained that they required VPNs to access their internal data.

I imagine it might be trickier for the US to implement such a plan vs. a country like Russia.

Yea...VPN is a pretty basic security measure no?

On random public Wi-Fi, yes. On home broadband, no.

Unless a VPN is required to access the intranet of your employee, then it is used for security at your home.

Why do you think VPNs aren't needed for home broadband connections?

First, no, this isn't coming to the US.

Second, this doesn't make any sense. How would you avoid rate limits by using a VPN?

The ISP is still sending and receiving all of that data for you.

Step 1) Rate limit high bandwidth use sites to discourage use

Step 2) Block VPNs to prevent circumvention of your rate limts

Step 3) Profit?

I don't see this happening, but I think that's what the comment you were responding to is suggesting.

Why not just rate limit VPNs?

You are not thinking politically enough.

If I rate-limit VPN outright, I'm an ugly dictator bent on destroying privacy.

If I rate-limit popular bandwidth-intensive traffic, I'm just a guy trying to keep network usage fair for every user. If that involves limiting VPNs as well, they are simply collateral damage, the end justifies the means, and I'm still a good guy.

They're using the wrong terminology, then; "ISP rate limits" refers to artificial bandwidth restrictions placed—at the data-link layer—on the last mile of a connection, to either upsell better plans or as proactive, aggressive form of QoS traffic-shaping to prevent oversubscribed head-end nodes from actually having to deal with multiple saturated downstream links they don't have the capacity to multiplex.

You're talking here more about avoiding the preferential site-by-site traffic-class-based shaping that goes on when Net Neutrality is not enforced. Which doesn't really happen, because it's far easier to just have a thinner peerage link between the ISP and the content-provider in the first place, and then do regular QoSing on that thin pipe with priority to the people on better plans. (The result is exactly like telephone service on New Year's Eve: local calls go through just fine, but long-distance calls mostly fail because the POTS peerage links are saturated.)

Because -all else being equal- using a VPN effectively enforces network neutrality. ;-)

Is it 'net neutrality' if you have to pay for it?

What prevents companies from artificially slowing things coming from known VPN endpoints?

You may recall that before Title 2 was asserted by the FCC, ISPs would prohibit "commercial use" in their consumer AUPs and once in awhile enforce this against someone who was telecommuting.

Time Warner affiliates would charge you an additional $20/mo for business access.

Not that I can recall, and I'm having a hard time finding anything about this. There's "business class" which means you get to run inbound servers, and maybe send email, etc. but I can't find any penalties for something like VPNing to an office network.

US doesn't need to block anything because many Internet companies' headquarters (domain name registrars, SSL certificate providers, cloud providers, OS developers, messengers, search engines, video publishing platforms) are located in USA and therefore are the subject of US laws.

For example, US doesn't have to block access to online casinos - they just order the banks and financial institutions not to work with such sites.

But Russia doesn't have such authority over Facebook or Skype. It cannot issue a NSL to Google for example. Therefore they are looking for other methods of controlling those companies (such as laws requiring to keep russian users' data in Russia).

China blocks many foreign web services and as a result they have their national messengers, search engine, social networks that will comply with national laws.

I do not approve Russian or China (especially China) policies, I just want to notice that Internet being an international medium without borders and customs creates new problems for applying national legislation (like taxation or spreading information violationg the laws).

I was referring to the act of interference, not the motivation behind it.

The government may not need to decrypt or block most traffic, but telcos will want to extract a levy for various uses of their circuits. Using the argument used against Netflix, why should your employer just be able to benefit from pushing ActiveSync down to your phone without paying Verizon?

> other leaders / politicians will now be thinking

Since when have western leaders ever taken policy direction from Russia?

Did you notice the last US presidential election?

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