I just discovered a fascinating thing.

I've been struggling to solve an internet problem at my parents home for several days, a router and some other stuff cannot connect to internet; the strange part is that my PC and my phone work. My first thought was related to the fact that I use a VPN, but this doesn't make much sense, since VPNs usually are the problem, as they add one more hop to the connection chain.

I did a lot of tests and at the end, exhausted, I decided to order a new cheap router to see if this was the culprit. Today I installed it, same exact problem, damn.

So I noticed that the modem has a diagnostic area with the usual ping and traceroute tools, and I tried them: "unknown host".

This is really crazy, all the WAN/LAN are down, the modem itself cannot see the internet, but with my PC I can connect around and shitpost on Nostr?

So I contacted my ISP and discovered that they suddenly, and without any alert (bastards), disabled the line because there was an unpaid invoice from months ago for an unknown reason, and they are not smart enough to use the credit card they already have to automatically pay it.

Here comes the most interesting part: how does a VPN bypass the administrative suspension on a line and give me free internet?

Did I exploit a huge hole in my ISP (and who knows how many others) infrastructure?

Can any networking guru explain this?