Why didn't the Indian government block traffics based on IP instead? That would make it much harder to bypass.

arch-choot 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If i'm not mistaken its because IPs are actually much easier to rotate than domains.

E.g. all the users will remember `example.com` , underlying it doesn't matter what IP it resolves to. If the IP gets "burned" , then the providers can rotate to a new IP (if their provider allows).

Vs. telling your users to use a new domain `example.org` , fake websites etc.

Also sensible ISPs usually don't block IPs since for services behind a CDN it could lead to other websites being blocked, though of course sometimes this is ignored. See also: https://blog.cloudflare.com/consequences-of-ip-blocking/

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boondongle 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I wouldn't say you're mistaken, but it's a simplification. In the network world, the capability exists to restrict what BGP advertisements are accepted via RPKI/a peer. Internet providers usually don't because the premium is placed on uptime/connectivity.

If tomorrow, everyone said "we don't want IP's from Frankfurt showing up somewhere in Dubai", you'd have a massive technical problem and rearranging to start with but once that was sorted you could geo-lock. IANA and Network providers simply haven't been doing that.

The reason it doesn't happen is Devs/Stakeholders want uptime from ISPs/Networks and not something they can't abstract. Basically its just a status quo much like the entire internet reverse-proxying through CDNs is a status quo. It wasn't always like that, and it may not always be like that in the future - just depends which way the winds blow over time.

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sgjohnson 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> we don't want IP's from Frankfurt showing up somewhere in Dubai

what do you mean, IPs from Frankfurt?

IP addresses are just IP addresses, they know no geographical boundaries. In RIR DBs you can geolocate them to wherever you want. Which is the entire reason why Geo IP DBs even exist - they triangulate.

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icehawk 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> "we don't want IP's from Frankfurt showing up somewhere in Dubai"

From a network perspective statements like that make no sense. IP addresses don't have any sort of physicality,

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pocksuppet 2 hours ago | parent [-]

They have registration data. Someone could declare they don't want IPs registered to companies from Frankfurt with geofeeds in Frankfurt to be advertised in Dubai.

	▲	sgjohnson 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It’s not how any of it works. How do you determine to whom an IP is even registered to? They get sub-leased all the time. The best you can do is check who has administrative control over the prefixes RIR info, but that doesn’t mean that anyone with control is the factual user of the IPs. You could check the IRR for the ASN and base it on that, but still. There's also no way to actually know _where_ an IP actually originates from. Only its AS path. The DFZ contains all prefixes announced everywhere, for the internet is completely decentralized.

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ffsm8 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's why you have a strictly legal domain that enables a convoluted redirect with plausible deniability (not 302)

It'll still eventually stick, but a lot slower

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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