LeoNet: Blocking VPNs and some gaming services

tl;dr: Recently, LeoPalace’s ISP, LeoNet, may be blacklisting certain domains… or it might be just me.

Recently, I’ve had some peculiar anomalies with some internet related things.Firstly, I’ve been unable to play the game “Among Us” online. I’m booted out of the lobbies I join or create within seconds, often with one of the following error messages (included here for search engine results):

* Reliable packet 1 (size=11) was not ack’d after 9999ms (9 resends).
* An unknown error disconnected you from the server.
* You disconnected from the server. Sent 6 pings that remote has not responded to.

This problem was on all of my devices: Among Us for Nintendo Switch (wired ethernet, and wireless), Among Us for Windows PCs (again, wired ethernet, and wireless), and even Among Us on my iPhone.

I tried changing the DNS servers too, just in case it was that simple, but no. That doesn’t work either.

But it works fine when I use personal hot-spot tethering to my cellular network, and it also works fine if I use a VPN with all of my devices. So a proxy can bypass the issue and let you play.

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Speaking of VPNs, NordVPN also stopped working as expected on my devices connected with LeoNet. The NordVPN browser extension worked fine, 100%, but there were some apps where I would need a proper VPN connection, and these did not work with the proper NordVPN app.

The NordVPN would show a “successful” connection, but absolutely no internet websites (except Google Search) would load in practice, nor could I operate internet speed-testing software.

It seems as though LeoNet has blocked NordVPN, as it simply wouldn’t work on my macOS or Windows computers. I tried changing Nord’s connection protocol from “Auto (Recommended)” to “NordLynx”, but this yielded the same dysfunctional outcomes.

However, when I changed Nord’s protocol setting from “Auto (Recommended)” to either “OpenVPN (UDP)” or “OpenVPN (TCP)”, it worked fine! Hooray!

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I’m not sure if this recent problem is ubiquitous across all LeoNet ISP subscribers, but I wanted to report it here if anybody else has experienced these issues too, and see how I resolved them.

I care less about the VPN, since there was a simple workaround, but it seems like an odd decision to blacklist “Among Us”. Perhaps it’s a mistake? Or perhaps Among Us has blocked my IP address from their servers, and I’ve misidentified the culprit.

Has anybody else used had this issue? Also, does anybody know a way of checking if LeoNet have blocked the game by mistake, or a way to request that they unblock the game?

EDIT: This post contains some workarounds that answer its own problems, but I posted it here because I tried searching for the answers to these problems with the keywords “LeoNet”, and had absolutely no information as if this was a unique problem. So this post also serves as a “public service announcement” and a record that it happened. Personally, if I found this post, it would have saved me hours of troubleshooting, so I hope that this post can save others hours of troubleshooting too. Therefore, ATT: Mods, please don’t delete.

3 comments
  1. The game might use a ping check first to test the reliability of your connection before allowing you to play. I know DOTA 2 does this and my IPOE fiber internet somehow always fails this ping check. I work around this by using PPPoE to play DOTA 2

    It seems to me Leonet is using some sort of packet filter on their routers to block all ICMP packets but it works when you use a VPN because once you use a VPN, then all the traffic that leonet can see will be either TCP or UDP. (The ICMP only goes to the VPN server)

    It might be that Nord vpn’s auto protocol setting was blocked by leonet but openvpn uses a different port number or protocol which allowed you to circumvent the block.

    I run a home vpn server using open vpn and I have noticed that certain public wifis block my open vpn connection. I have tried to circumvent this by setting my open vpn server protocol to TCP 443 in hopes to trick the public wifi into thinking I am connecting to an https website at my home, though the downside is that I cannot host a real https website at my home anymore since that port is now used by openvpn.

  2. I’m using Leonet as well, with a Buffalo router (cause their lifestick sucks ass) and I can confirm that my personal VPN still works- a VPS from Vultr running Ubuntu w/ OpenVPN. I haven’t tried amogus but all my games work well. There was a hiccup a few days ago when I was playing Gmod though, connection problems every 5 second or so.

    This might be unrelated but what router are you using?

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