Unban VPN providers (or whitelist account)

[Cardflip]

Your Warcraft III username: Cardflip
Realm/Gateway: all
Why are you banned: VPN rangeban (non-vpn connection is not banned)
Why you should be unbanned: art)y recommended me to post a ban appeal for viewtopic.php?p=487056

I would like VPNs to be unbanned, or to whitelist Cardflip@useast and Cardflip@uswest so I can use a VPN with those accounts. My ISP provider has been throttling connection to certain services, or is an unstable connection in general.

[Unitil]

I will address your request to unban all VPN providers first and foremost.

Data Centers are providers of a few services, some can be VPN/Proxy services (dependant on their client) that allow users to route their connection through the Data Centers IP(s)/Server(s). Though some users use this (such as yourself) to improve their connection quality, it is also used by individuals that use them to dodge in-game bans. This is why VPNs are banned in general, as they hide the users home external IPv4 address, and also allows a user to bypass in-game bans that are primarily IP/Hostname based.

Our best defence against this is to disallow VPN/Proxy services in general, and is why you'll run into a plethora of range bans on different Data Centers. This is especially true when the Data Center has been used to dodge an in-game ban. Does not matter if the service is being used legitimately, there will always be someone using it to dodge an in-game ban.

Your request to unban all VPNs is thereby denied.

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With regards to your claim that your services are "throttled" when using certain services, Warcraft III only requires a minimal amount of bandwidth to play. The article I've linked is the official requirements for Warcraft III, and it states you need a connection of 28.8 KBps+. This, when converted to kb/s, is 3.6 kb/s. After trying it out on my computer, the connection did not surpass 550 b/sec which is 4.4 kb/s. A decent dial up connect is able to produce upwards of 40 - 50 kbps which is between 5 - 6.25 kb/s which can be very unstable when compared to more modern connection types.

In addition to this, the game itself has no built-in reconnection tool. This means even if your VPN provider were to give you a solid connection, if a bump in connection (loss of packets, etc.) should occur between the host (our bots) and your VPN provider, it would result in you being disconnected regardless.

This is why we always suggest that the user use a reconnection tool to remedy any issues where if a connection is unstable, the connection can be potentially restablished when it is lost.

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Now, with regards to your request to be whitelisted, does your connection get throttled past 10 kb/s, have you considered using a reconnection tool?
Also, looking at your stats for stay %, you're sitting at a 82.5% stay rate across 1083 games (cardflip#useast.battle.net), and your last autoban on that account was was back in 2016. Your most recent ban would be voluntarily leaving on an alias, which has nothing to do with your connection. Not sure why you need to use a VPN with such good stay % stats.

If an account were to be whitelisted, you'd only be allowed one. However, I'd like to be convinced more with regards to why you feel the need of having a whitelisted account only to use a VPN. After you've provided additional reasoning behind the need of using a VPN, it'd need to be discussed among some of the other staff members to ensure we're all on the same page.

[Cardflip]

I understand what a VPN is, and why you ban it; I have a background in networking as a software engineer. My problem is that Comcast (my ISP) is consistently throttling my connection, or outright denying any traffic out to certain services at seemingly random time intervals. Doing my own testing with wireshark and private VPN, whenever traffic was denied to "netflix.com" or the actual IP found by doing a lookup, turning on a VPN allowed traffic to the site. The same thing has been occurring with battle.net itself. Keep in mind, connections to other services such as just google.com, youtube.com, or even mirrors for my linux packages have been fine. To make sure it wasn't a DNS issue, I switched DNS providers in my tests. My roommates also ran into this issue.

I'm not exactly sure what you might find, but this was occurring to me yesterday, and you'll see that I disconnected twice during a game (and was unable to log into battle.net until I turned on my VPN).

I know it sounds a little crazy to immediately jump to the conclusion that Comcast is violating net neutrality (or what was net neutrality) this quickly, but Comcast has an extensive history of doing this kind of thing. Raising hell with a customer representative hasn't helped as I've been ignored by them, and it seems my government is completely useless when it comes to this. In any case, regardless of why it's happening, it is happening, and a VPN has been fixing these issues.

While so far the issue does not occur often with WC3, it does occur too often with other services I use, and it's a bit of a hassle to set up my system for special cases such as WC3.

I understand a whitelist for one user opens the door for other users, and that it's more time spent towards something that isn't a priority from your perspective, but it would immensely help my situation, and in the future, potentially other people as well.

P.S. Those stats you referenced were accumulated over the period of years, where my connection was for the most part just fine. I've run into the whole ISP blocking traffic to battle.net fiasco just yesterday, but it's been blocking traffic across seemingly random services at random intervals for the past couple months.

[Unitil]

Have you attempted to use a reconnection tool?

When you were disconnected from the server, did you attempt to connect to one of the other realms?

[Cardflip]

A reconnection tool wouldn't help if I can't log into battle.net without a VPN in the first place, and once I lose connection it's usually down for quite awhile, so there's not enough time to reconnect. Yes, I have attempted to connect to other realms, and with other CD keys and accounts, and the result was the same.

If I can't use a VPN to play on your bots, it requires me to turn off my VPN that I normally use most of the time for the other services that are affected.

[Cardflip]

Any update? Don't like to bump but it's been awhile.

[nitromon]

The same thing has been occurring with battle.net itself. Keep in mind, connections to other services such as just google.com, youtube.com, or even mirrors for my linux packages have been fine. To make sure it wasn't a DNS issue, I switched DNS providers in my tests. My roommates also ran into this issue.

This sounds eerily similar to what happened to me last weekend with AT&T. My first inclination was also that net neutrality thing and they're blocking certain sites etc... I couldn't get on to BNET at all and when I can, I was lagging too much to play, but yet at the same time I was perfectly fine with youtube, google, etc...

It turned out that the whole thing had to do with the recent sudden rash of winter storm, lines were down, powers were down, some servers were down, etc... so traffic were being rerouted and congested. Took AT&T 48-72 hrs to fix it. Now it is working fine.

Again, may not be the same issue as yours, but thought I share this. Good luck!

[Unitil]

@Cardflip

I apologize for the delay in getting back to you with regards to your request for having a whitelisted account.

TL;DR
Your request to have a whitelisted account, only to use a VPN, is denied.

I have spoken with some of the other staff members, and we were on the same page with regards to your request. We believe there are other solutions available to you, and we also do not believe that throttling would cause you to lose all connectivity to battle.net.

If you're having difficulties connecting to battle.net, I'd recommend trying to use a smartphone hotspot to see if it remedies your situation. Also, If you're disconnecting from games I'd recommend using a reconnection tool. This allows you up to 3 minutes for your connection to be reestablished with the host, ultimately allowing you to reconnect.

Having an unstable internet connection or a high risk of lagging out? Are you tired of losing a won game because you disconnected?

Do not worry, there are solutions to solve your problem!

• ENT Connect is a on LAN connection based reconnection tool (no cd-keys needed).
• GProxy++(Varlock) is a reconnection tool for the battle.net with an external prompt.
• GProxy++ DLL is a reconnection plugin for battle.net (Recommended).

For technical issues or questions, post a topic in the technical support forum.

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