VPN?

[gsking]

I noticed the new in flight login screen says VPN access is blocked.   Is this a recent change?   It has worked fine for me so far. 

[TheMiddleSeat]

No, I don't believe Southwest has ever allowed VPN access over the inflight wifi, but as you see, when it comes to technology, there are always ways around every filter/block.

--TheMiddleSeat

[DancingDavidE]

It wasn’t blocked for me per se, but never seemed to work very well maybe once among all my tries, I’ve always planned to work by USB file access since then.

Anyone try Splashtop?

[gsking]

Interesting.   Well, maybe since I'm just using a work VPN, as opposed to some commercial service, they only block by IP address. 

Good to know I got lucky.

[JasonCampbell]

The reply above is incorrect. VPN absolutely used to be allowed with no issues. I've been Alist Pref FLying SWA 225K miles a year for 11 years now and I have a long history with their internet. 

 Prior to 2017-ish, the Wifi and VPN functionality worked very well.  After 2017 sometime, it stopped working as well and now their whole Wifi is pretty much crap. 

[elijahbrantley]

Only ever tried one (for work). It has never worked...which is unfortunate because that is valuable work time!

[ridgeway]

What VPN do you have that works? I've been having this issue as noted in this thread which I started in 2016

In-Flight Wifi - VPN Issue (southwest.com)

Various types from even PPTP to IPSec/LT2P to application based VPN apps fail. 

Curious to know what VPN works. 

[Tim723]

some company can blocks some or most ports. thats why my IT guys told me. He told me make your VPN or encrypted traffic go through port 443 and it will be much harder to block, since its the port used by secured internet connections.

there is more than that and its still possible to block vpn regardless of the ports, but maybe thats one way they do it.