> That is to say you cannot even connect to IP addresses unless you’re already part of the global whitelist for APs
> Try yourself. Get a VPN and then connect from certain regions and to won’t get very far and you’ll be slooooow
Connecting to a far away VPN doesn’t prove anything about a “global whitelist”
VPN addresses are commonly rate limited and block listed because they’re sources of abusive traffic and therefore trigger all of the common defense mechanisms.
Anyone who has run a forum or other service long enough knows that the spammers and the people trying to evade bans love their VPNs.
VPN services are also oversubscribed, leading to poor performance. Connecting to far away locations also causes throughput problems, especially if the country has poor internet infrastructure. Your connection has to round trip into and back out of that country to get to many services, meaning performance can be very poor.
> Just try launching a competitive DNS service and see how far you get
You’ll probably get as far as realizing that it’s an extraordinarily expensive venture to operate with no possibility of income, at which point you’d shut it down unless your hobby is lighting money on fire. There isn’t a conspiracy in this.
That's what they said, yes. Only certain access points are whitelisted to access things. If you aren't using one then you're blacklisted. VPNs aren't one. You claim there isn't a global whitelist and then proceed to explain a global whitelist.
> Only certain access points are whitelisted to access things. If you aren't using one then you're blacklisted.
No, this is not how these terms work. Blacklist and whitelist are not just words for opposite sides of a partitioned set. Both blacklists and whitelists are explicitly enumerated lists. If I blacklist a single thing, I have not implicitly created a whitelist containing everything else in the universe. Establishing that VPNs are often blacklisted is not - at all! - the same thing as establishing the existence of a "global whitelist".
These are usually implemented as actual whitelists. Someone goes through each AS, and decides whether it should have unrestricted access or not. Verizon gets unlimited access, because it mostly provides service to end users. Hetzner doesn't, because it mostly has servers. There are companies that enumerate all networks and tell you if they are user-mostly or server-mostly networks, so you can block all but the user-mostly networks.
> Try yourself. Get a VPN and then connect from certain regions and to won’t get very far and you’ll be slooooow
Connecting to a far away VPN doesn’t prove anything about a “global whitelist”
VPN addresses are commonly rate limited and block listed because they’re sources of abusive traffic and therefore trigger all of the common defense mechanisms.
Anyone who has run a forum or other service long enough knows that the spammers and the people trying to evade bans love their VPNs.
VPN services are also oversubscribed, leading to poor performance. Connecting to far away locations also causes throughput problems, especially if the country has poor internet infrastructure. Your connection has to round trip into and back out of that country to get to many services, meaning performance can be very poor.
> Just try launching a competitive DNS service and see how far you get
You’ll probably get as far as realizing that it’s an extraordinarily expensive venture to operate with no possibility of income, at which point you’d shut it down unless your hobby is lighting money on fire. There isn’t a conspiracy in this.