Internet has been subject to censorship for a long time now. Most of the times, it’s the governments who wants to have control over things that goes online. They don’t want to have things which show them in bad light to be out there for the world to see (even if it’s the actual truth). Internet service providers (ISPs) have been assisting the governments by processing their take down requests either to serve their own best interests or to avoid any blowbacks.
Now bitcoin seems to be the latest addition to the list of things being censored/blocked by the ISPs. There have been increasing reports of bitcoin users facing issues while attempting connection to their bitcoin clients over the default port. These recurring issues faced by many bitcoin users have got them thinking whether their ISP is intentionally blocking the TCP port 8333 used as a default by many bitcoin clients.
It is not confirmed whether the ISPs are deliberately blocking the TCP port 8333 with the intention of causing interference to bitcoin transactions. However, blocking multiple ports have been a standard practice followed by many ISPs in the name of offering optimum level of performance to its customers and TCP port 8333 may just be one among them.
One of the recent reports state that the ISPs may be limiting the number of open ports to protect their own network and bitcoin clients may have become unintentional victims of it. Those facing this issue can overcome it using few available solutions.
In case the ISP’s router is blocking port 8333, users can request their ISP to switch the router to Bridge Mode thus disabling router’s control over the hardware and acts only as a connecting gateway to the internet. In some places the user might have to go for a dedicated business connection instead of shared consumer broadband connection.