What I can do on the Public Wi-Fi currently: YouTube, streaming apps, SFW websites. All higher bandwidth usage than any game I could play on my phone. I could run 4K videos all day and they wouldn’t care. Blocking games can’t have anything to do with bandwidth.

These issues are happening both at work and other places I go including a library. Here are my questions:

  • How are they able to block VPNs? I’ve tried multiple and the connections do not go through. Will I need to make a home VPN using different ports? I’ve never done it.
  • How are they able to block Android games that go through Google Play Services? Isn’t Google embedded in nearly everything now? (as for why this matters: when I have break/free time, I want to be able to use my phone for what I want to do).
    • What seems to be happening is that when I open a game on my phone while on their Wi-Fi, the game flat out won’t connect to the update/file verification stage, so I can’t even log in (even if the game is updated already).

I’m fairly sure this is not device specific. This is something being mass-applied. Can’t use VPNs, can’t use Cloudflare. Google DNS works. I saw an old post saying that a Home VPN could possibly work, and that would be fine for me to use my own IP addresses.

It feels very odd for Play Services (which aren’t even P2P) to be blocked like this. This isn’t military Wi-Fi, it’s just an average company. Same thing for the library Wi-Fi.

  • Academic_Ad1931@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Its actually quite easy, most modern firewalls have application control/internet service lists that make it a menial task to block such things.

    Had a mild debate on Reddit the other day with someone who was harping on about VPN obfuscation behind able to bypass detection on firewalls (I think that was their point, anyway) but its hogwash, VPNs regardless of their marketing are quite detectable and quite blockable.

    As for why, that’s up to the usage policy of the company offering the service. We block such things for productivity sake and for our required commitment to KCSIE, I suspect Libraries, etc. will also have to conform in some aspects.