Virtual private network (VPN) users in Pakistan saw virtually no disruptions and improved download speeds last month, according to a technical investigation done by a digital rights group.
A network health scan across many internet service providers (ISPs) in Pakistan, according to a recent study by Bytes For All (B4A), found “significant” performance variations between VPN and non-VPN connections.
The paper mentioned Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) as one of the causes of internet delay and stated that “this improvement is evident in greater download speeds and lower retransmission rates, suggesting that VPNs may bypass ISP-imposed filtering or DPI measures.”
Since July, when internet outages first occurred, people have been trying to figure out what was causing it. Following many weeks of protests, the responsible minister finally responded, blaming the problem on internet users’ overuse of VPNs.
Shaza Fatima Khawaja, the minister of state for information technology and communications, disputed that the government was responsible for the internet slowdown during a news conference on August 18.
She asserted that the reason for the slower broadband speeds was because many users had shifted to using VPNs in order to access certain apps.
Shahzad Ahmad, the chairman of B4A and one of the report’s authors, told local media that the study was done on the four ISPs with the largest customer bases.
The authors compared the download and upload speeds, latency, and retransmission rates on fixed and mobile broadband, both with and without VPNs, using two open-source tools: Measurement Swiss Army Knife (MSAK) and M.Lab Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT).
Retransmission is the process of sending data packets that were lost during transmission again.
Retransmission rates that are high indicate that the network is being excessively tampered with, either by inspection, throttling, or blocking.
