Omantel Block(VoIP(YearsBack),VPN(NowOnwards))

The use of VPN by consumers has increased over the years as it is the only way for internet users in Oman to use VoIP services – which have been banned in Oman for a number of years now. Some VPN protocols such as PPTP are already completely blocked in Oman and providers of other VPN solutions are increasingly discovered by the ISP and are blocked on individual basis.

In the latest episode of internet censorship in Oman, the Telecom Regulation Authority of Oman has announced its plans to completely ban the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and would require companies to acquire the TRA’s permission before they can use them.

In fact, as a business, you must pay an absolute fortune for a leased line here – the only way to get a static IP with Omantel (Omantel conveniently decided that ADSL connections could not have static IP’s).

To give you an idea, an 8MB ADSL (and 0.5mb up) residential line is RO 99 a month(11946 Indian Rupees). A 1MB leased line (that’s full duplex, up and down) is RO 1,725 a month (after RO 400 setup fee) (this falls to RO 1,294 a month if you commit to 3 years usage) so first month charges are INR 256433/- and after that monthly charges are INR 208163/-. You read that correctly – to get a Fixed IP (which is required by many corporate networks architecture) you need to spend so much money a month! And that is only for a 1MB connection – you can look at Omantel’s rates here.

The fine, if you are caught, is significant – RO 500 for personal users, and RO 1000 for commercial users of VPN’s. That’s a large chunk of change. TRA will grant licenses for educational institutions and businesses, but you may not apply for a VPN license if you are a private user. There is no word on pricing from the TRA, nor is there any word on how long it will take to get a license granted, or how they will apply those licenses to the ISP’s filtering processes.

To detect whether someone is using a VPN, there are a number of methods that can be employed to do this. The most obvious one is to just simply block the common ports that are used by popular VPN providers, which has already been done. After that it get’s technical, and essentially what can be done is that a profile is looked for in the pattern of your internet traffic coming from your account. For example, if all the traffic coming from your account is being tunneled through one port, then that’s an easy guess that you are using a VPN.

[VIA]