Souped-up VPNs play 'cat and mouse' game with Iran censors Siya Tsewu Fri, 03/20/2026 - 21:05 PARIS - Iranians are managing to get online during the current war with the US and Israel despite drastic censorship and frequent blackouts, throwing the spotlight on to providers of tools such as VPNs (virtual private networks). AFP asked Adam Fisk, head of US-based nonprofit Lantern, which offers an advanced VPN, how his technology and similar apps can get around such heavy-handed blocking. Question: How does Iran's internet blocking work? Answer: In general, censoring countries block traffic using DNS (Domain Name System, which translates between human- and machine-readable names for websites and other resources), SNI (server name identification), IP-based blocking (of specific internet addresses) and other forms of Deep Packet Inspection (probing the content of data sent over the internet). Iran uses all of those, and it is generally much more aggressive than other countries in targeting the entire IP ranges of service providers that VPNs typically use. Iran is also uniquely aggressive in shutting down all international connectivity in times of crisis. In those cases, traffic is primarily limited to the domestic internet, or NIN (National Information Network). Q: How do tools like
