ISPs block VPNs through various techniques, with port and IP address blocking being the most common. When it comes to services that are designed to circumvent the rules, usually the targets on their back grows alongside their popularity. In other words, when a certain VPN provider starts gaining a larger user base it also puts it on the radar of ISPs and other corporations, sometimes even gaining the attention of governments. Fortunately, there’s also some ways to bypass these VPN blocks.
Regardless of which method ISPs use to restrict proxies and VPNs, the best way of avoiding blocks is to turn less popular services. Since one of the most common methods used by ISPs to block VPNs is to target IP addresses, when you connect to a VPN you’ll be attributed a temporary IP address from another country that will often be enough to overcome geolocation issues on many websites. In turn, this means there are only so many servers and IPs available to you and they’re always the same for all customers – though it’s true that the biggest VPN companies will often add new addresses. ISPs can search for and block the IP addresses known to belong to a certain VPN company.
The other method is to disable connection ports that are mostly associated with VPN traffic. The internet works through communication ports between two end points, and so ISPs, governments, and other system administrators can block the ones that would be suitable to halt access to a VPN server. VPNs regularly use the same ports – such as PPTP or L2TP, for instance – so it’s easy for ISPs to know which ones to ‘blackout’.
How to Tell if ISPs are Blocking VPNs
Knowing that your ISP is blocking your VPN is just a matter of putting two and two together. If you’re using a VPN but somehow you’re still unable to connect to a specific website, if a message shows up forbidding access, or if you’re simply unable to connect to the internet at all, then it’s likely that your ISP is behind it. A good way to try to diagnose and solve this problem is by changing back and forth between servers to see if a different IP address does the trick or switch between ports or VPN protocols, if possible.
More and more VPNs nowadays are already delivering techniques to circumvent this situation, such as traffic obfuscation and scrambling, which essentially disguise the VPN to make it look like regular traffic. Others provide an extensive list of ports and include some less popular ones that because of this are usually not on the radar of most ISPs.
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