After Federal network neutrality failed, courts delegated those regulatory powers to the states. California’s 2018 SB822 law, for example, prohibits ISPs from blocking, throttling, or engaging in paid prioritization, creating a significant check on some of the ISP practices you suggest. Other states have followed suit, creating a patchwork of regulations. So is there any legally safe way for any ISP to engage in traffic-infringing actions like the ones you discuss?
-mel via cell > On Dec 24, 2025, at 6:37 PM, Mukund Sivaraman via NANOG > <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 01:08:05AM +0000, Andrew via NANOG wrote: >> So, how do you feel about where to draw the line for what is >> acceptable from an ISP? > > Some of these may be double-edged (on how a person may feel, depending > on their perspective). > > As an example, some virtual private server operators will drop outgoing > SMTP traffic by default. Someone who's the target of spammers may cheer > this. Someone who wants to use it to run a mail server (non-spamming) > will not. Some operators can be contacted through a form to remove the > default filter. > >> - Redirecting port 53 DNS queries to ISP’s own servers, regardless of >> destination IP > > As a DNS programmer, this particularly bites me. My ISP does this and I > bypass it by SSH'ing into machines in a datacenter to do my tests > elsewhere. Another option is to use an IP tunnel such as Wireguard. I > guess that some ISPs can't avoid intercepting DNS due to government > relgulation that asks that certain qnames be blocked (for public > benefit?). > > Some VPN operators (if you can call them internet service providers as > they become the default route) also intercept all port 53 traffic and > redirect to their own resolvers. This is explained as for the > improvement of privacy for the customer. So it depends on the > perspective of the person how they feel about this. > > Mukund > _______________________________________________ > NANOG mailing list > https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/CXB37NBD55J3JAGOYPX7ENCV3KGVQEEU/ > <signature.asc> _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/2KQI6GZ3DTDS3SQVD2SRU7ZKHRLFYJ5I/
