
Jordan does not block, it throttles internet access - ericdanielski
https://netzpolitik.org/2020/jordan-throttles-not-blocks-internet-access-shutdowns-keepiton/
======
Ozzie_osman
Egypt does something similar. They do "soft blocks" where a site they don't
like will be sporadically blocked and unblocked on different ISPs, on-and-off.
Visitors of that site learn to expect that the site may or may not load when
they try to access it, so they bleed away and just stop trying to access it.

And the government can just say they're not blocking anyone and that it's ISP-
related technical issues.

Source: am originally from Egypt and my previous startup, an independent news
aggregate, is suffering this fate.

~~~
tuco86
Routing traffic through a giant cdn like cloudfront + eSNI + encrypted DNS
should finally put a stop to that.

~~~
srowaway
Is this something site owners themselves can set up, or does it require that
users use a special client or special DNS config? If you have any links, I'm
sure a lot of people reading this thread would really appreciate it.

~~~
IAmEveryone
The CDN (Cloudflare etc) is something the sites set up. Encryption of DNS
happens on the users’ side, but I believe it’s something browsers are starting
to enable by default.

------
kccqzy
This is actually a pretty common tactic among Internet censors. The Chinese
have been using this for a few years; whenever it detected an unknown protocol
that looked like tunneling or VPN, it just throttles it (introducing high
packet loss) without necessarily completely cutting off the connection.

Here's someone's experience: [http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-
great-firewal...](http://blog.zorinaq.com/my-experience-with-the-great-
firewall-of-china/)

~~~
IIAOPSW
The most insidious part of this is I've never been sure if use of the site was
being discouraged by the powers that be or if a more mundane, sensible
explanation existed. It could be the authorities effectively censoring, it
could be Chinese internet companies wanting Western competitors to have a
reputation for being slow and unreliable, it could just be mundane
technicalities like not bothering with peerage agreements for economic
reasons, or it could be an alignment of interests between all of the above. I
think not knowing who or what to blame, or even if there is a problem other
than your personal connection, is the point. "My connection to certain sites
seems inconveniently slow and maybe the government is doing it" is just way
less sharp than "the government won't let me see this and likely has something
to hide."

As counter-intuitive as it is, throttling without blocking is a more effective
form of information control than blatantly blocking. The flow of information,
like the flow of a river, cannot be stopped but it can be diverted and
otherwise engineered.

~~~
QuinnWilton
> As counter-intuitive as it is, throttling without blocking is a more
> effective form of information control than blatantly blocking.

This is equally true for removing problematic users from a site. Outright
banning them might anger them to the point of becoming a bigger nuisance, but
throttling them (without their knowledge) is more likely to just bore them
into targeting another service.

I know I've seen others here talk about this technique too, but I'm blanking
on specific examples.

~~~
dmoy
Shadow banning is incredibly effective for awhile, yes.

~~~
QuinnWilton
In this case I'm talking about slowbanning:
[https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-
hellban/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/)

> A slowbanned user has delays forcibly introduced into every page they visit.
> From their perspective, your site has just gotten terribly, horribly slow.
> And stays that way. They can hardly disrupt the community when they're
> struggling to get web pages to load. There's also science behind this one,
> because per research from Google and Amazon, every page load delay directly
> reduces participation. Get slow enough, for long enough, and a slowbanned
> user is likely to seek out greener and speedier pastures elsewhere on the
> internet.

------
throwaway8941
Same thing they do in Kazakhstan for more popular sites like YouTube. I have
also noticed encrypted tunnels (like WireGuard) being intolerably slow. Best
thing is, you can always write this off as a problem with the network (which
is the defense local politicians use most often).

~~~
rorykoehler
In that case Kazaks should be petition to introduce a legally binding SLA for
network performance in order for companies to qualify for the license to
operate.

~~~
throwaway8941
I honestly can't tell if you're joking or just not very familiar with what's
happening here. What companies? There are only two major ISPs here, one of
which is considered a "natural monopoly" and operates almost all networking
equipment which connects us to the outside world. Other ISPs route most or all
of their traffic through the major one. Needless to say, they maintain a very
close connection to law enforcement agencies and to the royal family itself.

~~~
skrebbel
I like how you used the phrase "the royal family".

------
Erlich_Bachman
Starlink internet can't come soon enough... Seems like the only real technical
solution. (In some of these places a political solutions seems to be centuries
off...)

~~~
magicsmoke
Starlink doesn't talk directly to handsets, so you'd still need a pretty large
and noticeable antenna that would draw unwanted attention from the local
authorities. If this style of censorship works by raising friction for your
typical internet user, well your typical internet user is also not going to
import a large and expensive transceiver from abroad.

I could see expats bringing a Starlink system with them into a country with
questionable internet to maintain a low latency VPN connection to company
servers back home, but that's about the only people that would or could use
Starlink. Even Musk has said that Starlink doesn't have the bandwidth to
provide service for all the users that might want to access it from an urban
area like Beijing.

~~~
vorpalhex
From my understanding, as Starlink density increases, the needed antenna
should get a bit more simple and more compact. Since the satellites are
intended to be geostationary, you should be able to use a very directional
antenna which will also save on size versus a radome or dish.

I suspect users will also grow clever and learn how to hide antennas - more
out of aesthetics than anything - which will help. More than a few Ham
operators have figured out that a regular fence can hide a very large coaxial
antenna.

~~~
magicsmoke
You're going in the opposite direction of what starlink is at least based on
what I heard. Starlink isn't geostationary, it's LEO. That's how they get
latency down to something comparable to your typical broadband network because
wireless signals don't have to travel up to geostationary orbit and back.
However, LEO satellites orbit faster than the earth's rotation, so you need a
whole web of mini satellites to ensure that as one satellite dips below the
horizon, your antenna can switch to another satellite that's orbiting past. As
you said, this needs a very directional antenna that can track a satellite.
Antennas get larger the more directional they are, not smaller. I have doubts
Starlink can shrink their phased array antennas smaller than their current
pizza box without a host of other issues. Also, authorities aren't going to be
looking for starlink antennas by sight. They'll be flying drones around
listening for unauthorized wireless transmissions on starlinks frequency bands
and homing in from that. Ask those ham operators how well a fence can hide
their antennas from the FCC if they decide to start a pirate radio station.

~~~
vorpalhex
Woops, you're correct re it being non-geostationary. This is what I get for
reading too quickly.

Actually if the satellites are moving you may not want a heavily directional
antenna since that adds in a fair bit of mechanical complexity. There are
several antenna designs which have relatively wide radiation patterns, but
that depends on the needed strength.

> They'll be flying drones around listening for unauthorized wireless
> transmissions on starlinks frequency bands and homing in from that

That would obviously work for detection, but would be complex and expensive. I
would be surprised to see such complexity from the CCP in short order unless
Starlink turns out to really disrupt the firewall in a widespread way.

~~~
magicsmoke
Check out how phased array antennas work. No mechanical parts needed. Those
things are used to precisely track missiles in defense systems. The accuracy
and versatility will blow your mind.

------
odiroot
That's the same case for Great Firewall of China. At least from what I
experienced. Your packets are not dropped. DNS still resolves.

Chinese authorities throttle the "original" packets and flood you with
nonsense content to confuse the clients.

------
aqibgatoo
I am from Kashmir (Indian Administered), the unprecedented internet blockade
that happened here has gone to become the longest in history, whole IT sector
in kashmir got collapsed, thousands of poeple lost jobs, before this it used
to be random internet shutdowns for a couple of days but now it is six months
and it was only after 5 months we have been given access to 2G internet ,
which too initially was whitelisted.

------
wyclif
The Philippines also has very slow internet, and lots of throttling and
intermittent package loss. They don't have a lot of their own infrastructure
and their backbone seems to be dependent on China. There is also an almost-
monopoly with ISPs, just enough 'competition' to allow plausible deniability
regarding monopoly.

------
hackworks
The intermittent disruption of services is death by 1000 cuts. Read the Zynga
story.

[http://wrongtool.kostadis.com/firewalls-killed-
zynga/](http://wrongtool.kostadis.com/firewalls-killed-zynga/)

------
nathancahill
Whatsapp is also completely unusable in Jordan because of this throttling. But
I don't believe it's a political decision, it's the cell phone companies way
of dealing with the competition.

------
untilHellbanned
Will satellite internet solve this?

~~~
sneak
Only if satellite internet providers are so anti-censorship they are willing
to put it on the line and use their tech and altitude to wantonly break local
laws—so probably not.

