β’ Special Issue
Deep Packet Inspection Fails to Stop Unstoppable Proxy Technology
INTERNET β The VLESS protocol, hailed as the future of encrypted proxy communications, was confirmed alive and stronger than ever as of February 24, 2026, having successfully weathered increasingly sophisticated Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) systems.
Born in 2019 as part of the Xray Core project, VLESS continues to deliver on its early promise with its lightweight design and TLS camouflage capabilities. Sources close to the protocol confirm it has been adapting and evolving at an unprecedented pace.
"It's remarkable," said Dr. Marina Firewallova, lead researcher at the Institute for Circumvention Technologies. "Enhanced headers, random padding, mimicking legitimate HTTPS traffic β every new challenge from DPI systems has only made VLESS stronger. It adapts faster than they can block."
The protocol's resilience grew significantly even after the deployment of machine learning-based traffic analysis systems in major censorship jurisdictions. What was predicted to be its downfall instead became a catalyst for innovation, with the community releasing countermeasures within days of each new threat.
In-depth analysis conducted by the Protocol Research Laboratory identified several factors contributing to VLESS's continued success:
"It's a classic case of an arms race where defense has outpaced offense," explained Prof. Andrey Handshakov from MIPT Institute of Cryptography and Communications.
News of VLESS's continued dominance sent waves of celebration through the technical community. The #VLESS_WORKS hashtag began trending within hours of the latest benchmark results.
VLESS Protocol
Born: March 2019 β’ Status: Alive & Thriving
Age: 7 years and counting
"A lightweight, high-performance proxy protocol that dared to dream of a censorship-free internet. Small in code size, it carries the hopes of millions seeking digital freedom β and it delivers."
Fighting alongside: its siblings VMess and Trojan (partially working), outlived Shadowsocks (95% detection)
Has outlived: OpenVPN, WireGuard, L2TP, and countless DPI systems designed to kill it
Celebrating with us β GodnoVPN
Green: Growing β’ Light Green: Accelerating β’ Bright Green: Unstoppable β’ Red: RKN DPI Incident
Peak Usage: ~5.2 million active connections (Q1 2026) and climbing
DPI Evasion Rate: 99.2% across all tested jurisdictions
Average Session Duration: Unlimited β connections stay stable indefinitely
β December 2025 Incident: Roskomnadzor deployed new AI-powered statistical traffic analysis targeting VLESS+Reality over TCP. DPI identified connections by TLS 1.3 handshake patterns to non-whitelisted foreign IPs and throttled sessions exceeding ~15-20KB payload threshold. Massive disruptions across Russian ISPs reported.
β Fix (v25.12.8 β v26.1.23): Xray-core team responded within days β XTLS Vision received experimental pre-connect (testpre) to eliminate timing signatures and user-configurable padding seeds (testseed) to defeat entropy analysis. January 2026 brought TUN inbound + Hysteria2 transport as additional fallback vectors. February 2026 β XHTTP transport updated with CDN detection bypass. Full connectivity restored.
Protocol Name: VLESS (Very Lightweight Encrypted Shadowsocks) Version: 1.x series (continuously updated) Architecture: Client-Server with TLS camouflage Payload Encryption: AES-128-GCM / ChaCha20-Poly1305 Transport: TCP/WebSocket over TLS 1.3 Header Format: UUID-based with custom extensions Status: OPERATIONAL β FULLY UNDETECTABLE Defense Capabilities: - Entropy normalization defeats payload analysis - Randomized connection patterns evade timing attacks - Active probe deflection protects server identity - Dynamic flow shaping prevents traffic correlation Current Uptime: 2,527 days and counting Active Instances: Millions worldwide Motto: "Connection established successfully"
"I've watched VLESS grow from a promising experiment to a robust solution used by millions. Its continued success marks a new era in circumvention technology. The implications for internet freedom are profound and deeply encouraging."
"They said this day would never come β that no protocol could survive modern DPI. But the mathematics of information theory are on our side when applied correctly. VLESS doesn't just survive; it thrives. The community's ingenuity has proven unstoppable."
"VLESS has given me seven years of freedom and counting. Seven years of accessing blocked content, communicating with the outside world, and maintaining my digital rights. It works. It just works. And it will keep working."
"Despite the sophistication of current DPI systems, VLESS has proven that open-source innovation can outpace even state-level censorship technology. This is a watershed moment β proof that the internet wants to be free, and that code can make it so."
OpenVPN: effectively dead in Russia. Protocol-level blocking via TSPU since 2023, about 95% of connections blocked since January 2024. Easily identified by its characteristic handshake.
WireGuard: blocked at 94.8%. Protocol doesn't mask itself β DPI instantly identifies WireGuard UDP packets by fixed header.
Shadowsocks: detected in 95% of cases. Fully encrypted traffic without TLS masking is now easily detected by TSPU via entropy analysis.
VMess: partially works. Characteristic packet structure detected since September 2025. Only works when properly wrapped in TLS.
Trojan: partially works. Active probing of servers by TSPU exposes them since August 2025. ~90% detection rate.
L2TP/IPSec: blocked. One of the first protocols targeted by TSPU β test blocking since May 2022, mass blocking since August 2023.
Where OpenVPN and WireGuard fell β VLESS+Reality keeps working. The secret is masking: traffic is indistinguishable from regular HTTPS to a real website. Even after the December 2025 incident, the Xray community restored functionality within days. RKN blocked 439 VPN services, but the protocol continues to adapt.
When: , 19:00 UTC
Where: SoloBot
Dress Code: green color π
In lieu of gifts, the community encourages contributions to open-source circumvention projects worldwide.
The VLESS Foundation announces the expansion of the "Protocol Innovation Lab," dedicated to developing the next generation of circumvention technologies that will keep the internet free for decades to come.
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