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I have family in Russia and it's a sad state of affairs. Our ability to communicate with them is slowly degrading to the point where now I am looking into self-

I have family in Russia and it's a sad state of affairs. Our ability to communicate with them is slowly degrading to the point where now I am looking into self-hosted communications.

proxysna 7mo ago
Look into vxray it works for my wife's family. AmneziaVPN worked for me during my last visit too.
- bbminner 7mo ago
  To my surprise, even sophisticated means of traffic masking like amnezia and vxray get disrupted frequently, requiring hopping around self hosted solutions and updating ones setup periodically. That's waaay beyond what most people are capable of. I am fortunate to have some tech worker acquaintance who live next to my family members, otherwise there'd be no way for me to for example guide them through setup and re-configuration remotely. Still, this setup gets disrupted every month or so requiring manual intervention.
  - konart 7mo ago
    I have 3x-ui installed in Netherlands and everything works fine so far. But sure, they are trying their worst to block every channel of data exchange they can.
    - OCTAGRAM 7mo ago
      I would say they are trying to block every public VPN, and if some VPN tried to hide behind CloudFlare's backs thinking that they took all CloudFlare sites as hostages, then whole CloudFlare is nuked, and hostages did not save VPN from blocking.
  - wildylion 7mo ago
    Try to get a middle hop somewhere at a russian datacenter. Sometimes these have DPI censorship boxes disabled (?) -- I know one that lets me forward simple Wireguard from mobile routers to a EU server with a few SNAT/DNAT rules, even though ordinarily that would get blocked at first sight. (Sadly, it's just Mikrotik gear that can't use any fancy censorship evasion protocols).
    - argulane 7mo ago
      If it's arm based mikrotik then you could run containers with fancier protocol wrappers
tananaev 7mo ago
I've been using WeChat. My hope is they won't dare to block Chinese messenger. China is pretty much the only remaining lifeline for Russia.
pixl97 7mo ago
Iron curtain is coming back up.
sega_sai 7mo ago
I have a similar situation and Amnezia (either in WG mode or Xray mode) works well with a self-hosted server. Also SSH tunnel as proxy so far also works.
TitaRusell 7mo ago
On a positive note Russia is now the heart of digital piracy. They aren't in a mood to go after piracy groups.
- DANmode 7mo ago
  Now? lol
iberator 7mo ago
[flagged]
- elvin_d 7mo ago
  I feel your take will be taken down soon as it’s not the place for such discussion. Just food for thought: what makes you to feel so entitled to judge people place of living? You know how we are not choosing where to be born and our mobility is restricted a lot of times? Is your separation for man and women comes from religion or other bias to categorize them?
  - iberator 7mo ago
    Russia is our enemy. Simple as that. It's bizarre to allow those people in the west (everybody suddenly is a refugee which is fake) .
    - wildylion 7mo ago
      This is the literal job of state security. Besides, most of those $#@$###s get in not by pretending they've been persecuted, but simply because they already have deep cover and hold passports of other countries. And I sincerely hope that you will never have to know what it's like to flee your own country, first hand. Peace.
    - johnisgood 7mo ago
      The Russian government or the Russian people?
      - iberator 7mo ago
        Russian people who didn't fight against the state with following persecution have no right to be refugees imo Maybe except gay people etc
- netsharc 7mo ago
  Oh look at you, how easy for you to demand of others that they put themselves in danger before you deem them worthy of protection. "You must have proof you've been arrested by Putin's police before we let you in here!". So they must risk the chance of immediate imprisonment in a freezing Siberian dungeon before you open your generous doors... And graduates working for the Belarussian state, why is that acceptable and not considered as "conspiring with the war criminals" in your eyes? What other barriers are there that you have in your mind we don't know about, for someone who's worked as expected, and fled the country afterwards?
wildylion 7mo ago
I'm considering even creating a dial-up (yes, V.34 modem!) line somewhere near to Russia, to offer a side channel with text browsing, news, IRC and email. For when things get really, really bad (they will ...) Before you ask: yes, dialup works on modern networks if the codec is G.711 (uncompressed). Most public phone network is this way because fax is a thing, but some bulk carriers or some enterprises use compressed codecs.

I have family in Russia and it's a sad state of affairs. Our ability to communicate with them is slowly degrading to the point where now I am looking into self-hosted communications.

proxysna 7mo ago

Look into vxray it works for my wife's family. AmneziaVPN worked for me during my last visit too.

bbminner 7mo ago
To my surprise, even sophisticated means of traffic masking like amnezia and vxray get disrupted frequently, requiring hopping around self hosted solutions and updating ones setup periodically. That's waaay beyond what most people are capable of. I am fortunate to have some tech worker acquaintance who live next to my family members, otherwise there'd be no way for me to for example guide them through setup and re-configuration remotely. Still, this setup gets disrupted every month or so requiring manual intervention.
- konart 7mo ago
  I have 3x-ui installed in Netherlands and everything works fine so far. But sure, they are trying their worst to block every channel of data exchange they can.
  - OCTAGRAM 7mo ago
    I would say they are trying to block every public VPN, and if some VPN tried to hide behind CloudFlare's backs thinking that they took all CloudFlare sites as hostages, then whole CloudFlare is nuked, and hostages did not save VPN from blocking.
- wildylion 7mo ago
  Try to get a middle hop somewhere at a russian datacenter. Sometimes these have DPI censorship boxes disabled (?) -- I know one that lets me forward simple Wireguard from mobile routers to a EU server with a few SNAT/DNAT rules, even though ordinarily that would get blocked at first sight. (Sadly, it's just Mikrotik gear that can't use any fancy censorship evasion protocols).
  - argulane 7mo ago
    If it's arm based mikrotik then you could run containers with fancier protocol wrappers

tananaev 7mo ago

I've been using WeChat. My hope is they won't dare to block Chinese messenger. China is pretty much the only remaining lifeline for Russia.

pixl97 7mo ago

Iron curtain is coming back up.

sega_sai 7mo ago

I have a similar situation and Amnezia (either in WG mode or Xray mode) works well with a self-hosted server. Also SSH tunnel as proxy so far also works.

TitaRusell 7mo ago

On a positive note Russia is now the heart of digital piracy. They aren't in a mood to go after piracy groups.

DANmode 7mo ago
Now? lol

iberator 7mo ago

[flagged]

elvin_d 7mo ago
I feel your take will be taken down soon as it’s not the place for such discussion. Just food for thought: what makes you to feel so entitled to judge people place of living? You know how we are not choosing where to be born and our mobility is restricted a lot of times? Is your separation for man and women comes from religion or other bias to categorize them?
- iberator 7mo ago
  Russia is our enemy. Simple as that. It's bizarre to allow those people in the west (everybody suddenly is a refugee which is fake) .
  - wildylion 7mo ago
    This is the literal job of state security. Besides, most of those $#@$###s get in not by pretending they've been persecuted, but simply because they already have deep cover and hold passports of other countries. And I sincerely hope that you will never have to know what it's like to flee your own country, first hand. Peace.
  - johnisgood 7mo ago
    The Russian government or the Russian people?
    - iberator 7mo ago
      Russian people who didn't fight against the state with following persecution have no right to be refugees imo Maybe except gay people etc
netsharc 7mo ago
Oh look at you, how easy for you to demand of others that they put themselves in danger before you deem them worthy of protection. "You must have proof you've been arrested by Putin's police before we let you in here!". So they must risk the chance of immediate imprisonment in a freezing Siberian dungeon before you open your generous doors... And graduates working for the Belarussian state, why is that acceptable and not considered as "conspiring with the war criminals" in your eyes? What other barriers are there that you have in your mind we don't know about, for someone who's worked as expected, and fled the country afterwards?

wildylion 7mo ago

I'm considering even creating a dial-up (yes, V.34 modem!) line somewhere near to Russia, to offer a side channel with text browsing, news, IRC and email. For when things get really, really bad (they will ...) Before you ask: yes, dialup works on modern networks if the codec is G.711 (uncompressed). Most public phone network is this way because fax is a thing, but some bulk carriers or some enterprises use compressed codecs.