If a packet is traversing an ISP's network the ISP should have to know where it is coming from and where it is going, right? So even if you "encrypt the first hello" packet, the ISP would still know where it was routed, right?
I'll freely admit I have only a very basic (and likely outdated) understanding of IP networking, but I don't see how this protects my browsing habits from my ISP. Even if they can't understand my "hello" to lemmy.ml, they still know I'm talking to lemmy.ml's IP address about something.
What am I missing?
Your ISP is mostly going to be seeing AWS, Azure, GCP, Cloudflare, etc IP addresses.
If I understand correctly, someone other than your ISP could see the name of the website, since it isn't encrypted. I think it would bounce through several servers that could possibly read the data.
This makes it so that your ISP doesn't see the actual name of the server/site you're communicating with, only the IP address. Without Encrypted Hello they're able to see both.
I would think that an IP address tells you the domain name by doing a simple DNS lookup.
In many cases you can, but there's never a guarantee that a given IP address will have reverse DNS records configured for resolve it into. On top of that, if it's a major site it's likely hosted behind a content delivery network that may a share a single IP address across thousands or even millions of completely unrelated servers. Cloudflare does some pretty interesting stuff with that approach: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-servers-dont-own-ips-anymore/
edit: bad at typing
Cloudflare fronts much of the internet, so all your ISP would see is that you connect to cloudflare, not which site you actually connect to.
In fact this was a big reason cloudflare and Amazon were angry with the signal foundation, for using domain front running, using the same trick in fascist countries to still be able to talk to signal servers
When you type in www.example.com, you request the IP of the server for that site using a DNS server. The DNS server sends you the IP and then you connect to it. If they are using https for DNS it means that your ISP or onlookers have to reverse which domain you're accessing from that IP to know that you're accessing www.example.com.
Yeah I think it has the same limitations that pretty much anything not through a vpn has because you still have to tell your isp where to send the data. Your isp will still see some things, even if it’s encrypted (metadata, DPI, habits, and things beyond my knowledge). This sounds like a step in the right direction for the majority of people though, even if it’s minor.
I kind of see it like differentiating between them seeing lemmy.ml via this vs lemmy.ml/thing-i-want-private/peronal.html without it, but I could be wrong about that.
If a packet is traversing an ISP's network the ISP should have to know where it is coming from and where it is going, right? So even if you "encrypt the first hello" packet, the ISP would still know where it was routed, right?
I'll freely admit I have only a very basic (and likely outdated) understanding of IP networking, but I don't see how this protects my browsing habits from my ISP. Even if they can't understand my "hello" to lemmy.ml, they still know I'm talking to lemmy.ml's IP address about something.
What am I missing?
Your ISP is mostly going to be seeing AWS, Azure, GCP, Cloudflare, etc IP addresses.
If I understand correctly, someone other than your ISP could see the name of the website, since it isn't encrypted. I think it would bounce through several servers that could possibly read the data.
This makes it so that your ISP doesn't see the actual name of the server/site you're communicating with, only the IP address. Without Encrypted Hello they're able to see both.
I would think that an IP address tells you the domain name by doing a simple DNS lookup.
In many cases you can, but there's never a guarantee that a given IP address will have reverse DNS records configured for resolve it into. On top of that, if it's a major site it's likely hosted behind a content delivery network that may a share a single IP address across thousands or even millions of completely unrelated servers. Cloudflare does some pretty interesting stuff with that approach: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-servers-dont-own-ips-anymore/ edit: bad at typing
Cloudflare fronts much of the internet, so all your ISP would see is that you connect to cloudflare, not which site you actually connect to.
In fact this was a big reason cloudflare and Amazon were angry with the signal foundation, for using domain front running, using the same trick in fascist countries to still be able to talk to signal servers
When you type in www.example.com, you request the IP of the server for that site using a DNS server. The DNS server sends you the IP and then you connect to it. If they are using https for DNS it means that your ISP or onlookers have to reverse which domain you're accessing from that IP to know that you're accessing www.example.com.
At least I think that's what is happening.
Yeah I think it has the same limitations that pretty much anything not through a vpn has because you still have to tell your isp where to send the data. Your isp will still see some things, even if it’s encrypted (metadata, DPI, habits, and things beyond my knowledge). This sounds like a step in the right direction for the majority of people though, even if it’s minor.
I kind of see it like differentiating between them seeing lemmy.ml via this vs lemmy.ml/thing-i-want-private/peronal.html without it, but I could be wrong about that.