UAE (Dubai) VPN Problems

[antar81 0]

Greetings all, it's been noted in recent months that using Air VPN in the UAE has become more difficult.
Currently only encapsulated sessions using SSL or SSH work, although there seems to be some DPI taking place that is allowing the ISPs to throttle traffic.
Has anyone else had this issue and addressed it?

[jeuia3e9x74uxu6wk0r2u9kdos 11]

Hi!

Have you tried using an alternative entry-ip address like specified here? https://airvpn.org/specs/

go to -> Protocols and entry-IP addresses of each VPN server

In particular you could try IP entry 3 or 4 with tls-crypt, tls1.2

This is a post written by @Staff  one year ago (now, all servers support tls-crypt and you can use Eddie Android to easily connect with your android smartphone or Eddie Desktop to connect with you personal computer and bypass DPI)

Edited ... by jeuia3e9x74uxu6wk0r2u9kdos
Clarification

[ethix 2]

On 9/3/2019 at 11:50 AM, jeuia3e9x74uxu6wk0r2u9kdos said:

Hi!

Have you tried using an alternative entry-ip address like specified here? https://airvpn.org/specs/

go to -> Protocols and entry-IP addresses of each VPN server

In particular you could try IP entry 3 or 4 with tls-crypt, tls1.2

This is a post written by @Staff  one year ago (now, all servers support tls-crypt and you can use Eddie Android to easily connect with your android smartphone or Eddie Desktop to connect with you personal computer and bypass DPI)

I also live in the UAE, and I have been here for a few years. Your suggestions do not work unfortunately. They did at one point, but that is not the case currently.

About 1.5 years ago or so, I had to switch to tls-crypt to connect, as DPI seemed to be blocking standard UDP 443 (or any port TCP or UDP). Then, about 9 months ago, this now fails in interesting ways. I use pfSense with gateway monitoring, and like OP says, traffic is throttled to the point is not useable. It went off and on for 1-2 weeks at a time for a few months, and now it is all time problematic. With tls-crypt to any ports or IP/FQDN's, there is severe throttling to about ~80% packet loss for any connection speeds. I switched to Stunnel with OpenVPN tunnels (took some work) on pfSense, and I experience throttling / packet loss on any connection speeds over 1-2Mbps. The experience is the same using Eddie clients on Windows 10, and it is the same on my mobile devices as well. Using Eddie, if I do OpenVPN over SSH or SSL to any ports/IP/FQDN, all the same. I spent many hours testing all the possible combos, no dice.

Other VPN providers have the same issues, except most others are entirely worse because they do not offer tls-crypt or Stunnel/SSH options. If their tunnels do manage to get up, significant packet loss. It works for a VOIP call home, but that is about it.

@Staff are there any suggestions or is this a known issue? I have many colleagues who work in China, and my discussions with them leave no doubt in my mind that UAE is now at the same level as their great firewall in terms of blocking non-desired connections. I suspect machine learning tools, and I have no hope it will improve as this technology comes down in cost. See this for more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/d7vlqd/how_do_airlines_usually_sandbox_in_flight_network/f162oxk/
 

[antar81 0]

This is a good detailed follow up that hasn't been resolved by anyone out there.

UAE DPI results in significant throttling that greatly impairs VPN sessions... VOIP is barely feasible, and if you try any other service (http browsing, downloading, streaming) in parallel, then the VPN session grinds to a halt.