DDG was blocked for the past several days. The issue came up on /r/duckduckgo and /r/india, following which the Internet Freedom Foundation wrote to the Department of Telecom [1]
DDG is working for me again (it's my default search engine) so that's a relief. In the past, the government or the ISPs in India have nonchalantly blocked several websites and even NSFW sub-reddits. The IFF even has a dump of blocking orders issued by courts leaked by a whistleblower. [2]
Those who are tired of government blocking, make a $5 droplet in Germany or Netherlands and set wireguard.
When I was in India, I was getting much better speed on vpn compared to direct connection. How can this be possible? Page loads appeared significantly faster through digital ocean server.
I was under impression, VPN adds overhead and reduces speed?.
I often do market research and blocking gets in way, I can decide what website is good for me what isn't. Government shouldn't have any say in that.
I've heard that many ISPs in India have bad routing, which probably explains what you experienced. That's why services with local servers in India (e.g. Cloudflare WARP+) can have the same effect.
When I was in India, I was getting much better speed on vpn compared to direct connection. How can this be possible? Page loads appeared significantly faster through digital ocean server.
I was under impression, VPN adds overhead and reduces speed?.
I often do market research and blocking gets in way, I can decide what website is good for me what isn't. Government shouldn't have any say in that.