I don't have personal experience using it, but I believe Ooni Probe is designed for your exact use-case: https://ooni.org/about/
Thanks for the recommendation!
Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#12I can definitely notice an improvement in performance when I use a VPN, however it would be cool to see where things are being delayed. Is traceroute or curl something that could help here?
I ran a curl test and noticed that the TCP connect time is where things are getting hung up, taking over 80 seconds! Does anyone know if this is indicative of deliberate rate limiting or just a bad peering connection?
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#13Just curious -- if a country didn't want a site to be seen, why would they rate-limit it instead of just blocking connections completely?
Is that a thing countries do, like if they want to "punish" a site while retaining plausible deniability?
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#14Would mtr[0] help diagnose this?
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#15Just curious -- if a country didn't want a site to be seen, why would they rate-limit it instead of just blocking connections completely? Is that a thing countries do, like if they want to "punish" a site while retaining plausible deniability?
People's attention spans are ridiculously short. If the person is actively looking for the content, sure, that obviously won't work. However, if it's a more casual browser, then going to a site that takes a long time to load between different pages is definitely a way to get them to not visit it any more. This even works on tech-savvy people, as opposed to just blocking a site which will just get them to use a proxy.
> Is that a thing countries do, like if they want to "punish" a site while retaining plausible deniability?
China and Russia do this with a lot of western sites, from what I've heard.
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#16[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#17Just curious -- if a country didn't want a site to be seen, why would they rate-limit it instead of just blocking connections completely? Is that a thing countries do, like if they want to "punish" a site while retaining plausible deniability?
It would be too obvious. If you can't get to the site you know it's blocked. If it's just super slow all the time, you won't know why and may just get frustrated and leave.
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#18One possible method: Write a script to request the site continuously and see if it fails to respond with any regularity. From there you can start dialing it in and determine what the rate limit actually is. A rate limit should be consistently reproducible unless it's implemented in a clever way.
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#19I can definitely notice an improvement in performance when I use a VPN, however it would be cool to see where things are being delayed. Is traceroute or curl something that could help here?
I ran a curl test and noticed that the TCP connect time is where things are getting hung up, taking over 80 seconds! Does anyone know if this is indicative of deliberate rate limiting or just a bad peering connection?
If it takes 80 seconds to TCP connect, something is pretty wrong.
tcpdump / wireshark would likely show lots of retransmits. Traceroute/mtr may give you an idea of where the loss starts. If you can find servers on similar hosting, you can get some idea of if it's targetted or not.
Re: Ask HN: How can I tell if a site is being rate limited?
#20Have some fun at the same time:
1) get a vpn account (proton, other)
2) hack your worst enemy's wifi with your favourite tools
3) while outside your enemy's home, boot a linux live distro
4) change your computer's name to your enemy's name
5) connect to the enemy's wifi
6) try to visit all the sites banned by your country
7) insult your country's leader in a public forum using your enemy's name
8) test the speed of the suspected rate-limited site
9) set-up your vpn account settings
10) using your vpn, re-test the rate-limited site
11) subtracting a fair percentage slow down because of the vpn, gauge if there's a significant difference between the two tests
12) turn off computer, go home, enjoy tasty beverage
13) grab some popcorn, go watch your enemy's house from a reasonable distance
14) post video on youtube of your enemy getting busted, using your favourite heading
If that's all too much fun for you, then skip most of it and only do #s 8 to 11 from your own network or favourite hot-spot.