After Federal network neutrality failed, courts delegated those regulatory powers to the states. California’s 2018 SB822 law, for example, prohibits ISPs from blocking, throttling, or engaging in paid prioritization, creating a significant check on some of the ISP practices you suggest. Other states have followed suit, creating a patchwork of regulations. So is there any legally safe way for any ISP to engage in traffic-infringing actions like the ones you discuss? -mel via cell
On Dec 24, 2025, at 6:37 PM, Mukund Sivaraman via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
On Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 01:08:05AM +0000, Andrew via NANOG wrote:
So, how do you feel about where to draw the line for what is acceptable from an ISP?
Some of these may be double-edged (on how a person may feel, depending on their perspective).
As an example, some virtual private server operators will drop outgoing SMTP traffic by default. Someone who's the target of spammers may cheer this. Someone who wants to use it to run a mail server (non-spamming) will not. Some operators can be contacted through a form to remove the default filter.
- Redirecting port 53 DNS queries to ISP’s own servers, regardless of destination IP
As a DNS programmer, this particularly bites me. My ISP does this and I bypass it by SSH'ing into machines in a datacenter to do my tests elsewhere. Another option is to use an IP tunnel such as Wireguard. I guess that some ISPs can't avoid intercepting DNS due to government relgulation that asks that certain qnames be blocked (for public benefit?).
Some VPN operators (if you can call them internet service providers as they become the default route) also intercept all port 53 traffic and redirect to their own resolvers. This is explained as for the improvement of privacy for the customer. So it depends on the perspective of the person how they feel about this.
Mukund _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/CXB37NBD... <signature.asc>