5 ms·
I wonder if IP fragmentation would/could have any effect on the ability for a Nation State's (i.e., China, Russia, North Korea, ?, ???) firewall to prevent pack
by peter_d_sherman 3y ago
I wonder if IP fragmentation would/could have any effect on the ability for a Nation State's (i.e., China, Russia, North Korea, ?, ???) firewall to prevent packets from entering/leaving a blocked country...
Why or why not?
In fact, now that I think about it... what happens if a TCP/IP connection is initiated from another country to a TCP/IP address inside of an outwardly blocked country?
Would that act similar to a NAT punchthrough, but on a Nation-State's firewall?
Think about it this way... let's take an arbitrary example, China...
And let's suppose for the purposes of discussion that what the western Mainstream Media says about China's Internet is completely true -- that outgoing connections to the West from China -- are blocked.
OK, but there still is Alibaba -- the equivalent of China's Amazon.com.
Connections FROM the West (e-commerce connections, "we buy from you", "you are a merchant to us", etc., etc.) TO Alibaba.com (in China) -- are not blocked, and would NOT be blocked by the Chinese government!
Why?
Because anywhere there's trade -- if the trade is beneficial to the government in question (anyone heard of taxes, anyone? They benefit the government you know!) -- there will be internal political pressure NOT to prevent that trade from occurring!
So let's say that a TCP/IP connection that looked like a legitimate e-commerce connection -- was initiated FROM the West, to an IP address in China for a legitimate Chinese e-commerce site...
Now, couldn't that connection, once established (since it is, after all bi-directional) -- be used to send data outside of China?
Yes!
But to only one outside/external IP address!
But what if that IP address on the Western side (being in a non-firewalled country) -- now could somehow route that data to any other IP address around the world?
Sort of like a VPN -- but the connection is opened up from an INCOMING connection, not an outgoing one...
Would that be the equivalent of NAT punchthrough -- for a Nation State's firewall?
?
Before you answer, I'm guessing that there are Deep State bots (from all countries!) that will try to derail this conversation...
That's a testament to "always think for yourself" (let logic be your guide!) -- stay away from so called "expert" opinions, especially one or two sentence "no it can't be done" or "it would never work" replies by fake posters with fake names from fake accounts!
But, I guess we'll open up the floor to the AI powered agenda-driven bots... foreign and domestic! :-)
Also, note that I don't suggest/condone that anyone actually do any of the above -- this discussion is theoretical in scope only!
- vitus 3y ago> Connections FROM the West (e-commerce connections, "we buy from you", "you are a merchant to us", etc., etc.) TO Alibaba.com (in China) -- are not blocked, and would NOT be blocked by the Chinese government! Um, conspiracy theories aside, Alibaba has servers in the US.
- peter_d_sherman 3y agoWhich would have two-way data paths (inbound/outbound) to the Alibaba company (or other e-commerce company in the case of a different e-commerce company) in mainland China, or, more broadly, to the interior of other countries whose Nation-State firewall blocks outgoing connections... Point is, if there's a way out, then there's a way in... How does the data on the Alibaba servers in the U.S. get updated? Probably not by carrier pigeon... Someone (or a group of people) in the Alibaba offices in China updates that server when prices change, when new products are added, etc., etc. And how does that happen, if there isn't an outgoing Internet connection? And if so, then that's proof of a non-blocked outgoing connection from China. And if that's true, then we need to raise the question of which types of outgoing connections are selectively permitted from China (because obviously the Alibaba update on U.S. servers is permitted!) Which would in turn start to crumble the western mainstream media narrative that China blocks all outgoing connections... In other words, if China doesn't block all outgoing connections, then we need to know (if we care at all about global Internet censorship) which types of connections are blocked, which ones aren't, and what the exact criteria for a blocked or permitted connection is... Because if you are correct, then it would seem that connections from mainland China to Alibaba's U.S. servers are NOT blocked... Conspiracy theories aside!
- zokier 3y agoObviously not all connections from China are blocked! That is not news. Try reading the basic Wikipedia articles for starters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...