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Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

alexanderell.is

101–110 of 137 posts

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#101

Of all the possible websites to choose as an example, Wikipedia is a strange choice since, unlike most websites, one can download its database and query it offline. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download https://download.kiwix.org/zim/ Some other ways to search and read Wikipedia offline: XOWA: (S: XOWA) WikiTaxi: S: WikiTaxi (for Windows) aarddict: S: Aard Dictionary BzReader: S: BzRe…

Saw that page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download and where which will be suitable for ebook reader for free.

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#102
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days with the prevalance of HTTPS, another option is to inspect the TLS client hello packet. To work well with load balancers etc, clients typically indicate the server name that they're trying to connect to (SNI - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication ). That information is not encrypted. So you have both the dst IP and hostname in the initial packet.

Zero-rating at ISPs via SNI inspection is pretty common practice

Makes me wonder if one could bypass the zero-rating scheme with a custom TLS tunnel that sends SNI headers for Facebook.com to your own server.

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#103
post #10

Many years ago (2012) Delta inflight wifi would allow DNS queries out without paying. Being a very frequent flyer I used to run an ip-over-dns tunnel using Iodine[1]. It was slow but worked. I wonder if they’ve blocked that hole yet. [1] https://code.kryo.se/iodine/

lol holy shit I'm never going to have an unproductive flight again

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#105

here an idea: take a screenshot of the website and send it back as a compressed base64 text or what ever will produce smallest result then decode that image from the text on your phone

Yeah this seems much better. Very doable over WhatsApp.

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#106
post #66

Cool pet project, admirable engineering etc. My comment is about something else: net neutrality, as someone already mentioned. I was teaching English in Laos for school kids. I was amazed that some of their families struggle with providing (nutritious enough) food for their children, yet, everyone had smartphones with always-on 4G,even in the countryside - however, no WiFi almost anywhere. The brains of these kids ar…

You may try to write an email/better official mail or even visit personally to local cellulars marketing teams to include wikipedia to the subscriptions. You may propose them as PR action: future-care, education-care name it. Trust me it may definetelly works.(I did it many times("tune up" some events) but I worked inside the cellular companies) The main problem may be is to the break the "first line" of "corporative bureaucracy" defence.

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#107
post #86
post #66

Cool pet project, admirable engineering etc. My comment is about something else: net neutrality, as someone already mentioned. I was teaching English in Laos for school kids. I was amazed that some of their families struggle with providing (nutritious enough) food for their children, yet, everyone had smartphones with always-on 4G,even in the countryside - however, no WiFi almost anywhere. The brains of these kids ar…

https://internet-in-a-box.org/ might come in handy. Facebook tried the same in India but was quickly shutdown: https://www.wired.com/2016/02/facebooks-free-basics-app-is-n...

This stuff is such a gray area for me. I’m staunchly pro-net neutrality, but depriving people of the internet altogether means losing a huge asset for learning, a platform for financial success that otherwise is unattainable, and more.

But then you read about the success of Facebook in emerging markets in Africa and it becomes even murkier. Basics has caused Facebook to become utterly dominant in many African countries[0], and that’s precisely what net neutrality tries to prevent. That’s so much power. I don’t know what the right answer is.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/20/facebook-...

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#108
post #10

Many years ago (2012) Delta inflight wifi would allow DNS queries out without paying. Being a very frequent flyer I used to run an ip-over-dns tunnel using Iodine[1]. It was slow but worked. I wonder if they’ve blocked that hole yet. [1] https://code.kryo.se/iodine/

I tried Iodine around 3 years ago on a Swiss flight, it worked to read my mails over SSH using Alpine, but was so slow that basically it was unusable. Not sure what was going on, I had the impression that DNS queries were getting throttled after some threshold...

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#109
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take has always been: If you can't blink an LED, you can't do anything. My first priority is to get an LED blinking, and keep it blinking. Every other feature is less important.

I blinked an LED in my cell but I'm still behind bars. Guess these dumb adages don't really hold a candle to reality.

If you can blink an LED, you have DC current and can electrochemically dissolve those bars.

Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions

#110
post #66

Cool pet project, admirable engineering etc. My comment is about something else: net neutrality, as someone already mentioned. I was teaching English in Laos for school kids. I was amazed that some of their families struggle with providing (nutritious enough) food for their children, yet, everyone had smartphones with always-on 4G,even in the countryside - however, no WiFi almost anywhere. The brains of these kids ar…

You may try to write an email/better official mail or even visit personally to local cellulars marketing teams to include wikipedia to the subscriptions. You may propose them as PR action: future-care, education-care name it. Trust me it may definetelly works.(I did it many times("tune up" some events) but I worked inside the cellular companies) The main problem may be is to the break the "first line" of "corporative…

Wikipedia contains non-disney-fied facts, like sex education and the Armenian genocide. Not sure if operators would be keen to include it.

”AT&T is subjecting our kids to blasphemy” is a real PR problem in many countries

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