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I'm managing a small network and I'm requested to block WhatsApp calls without blocking its messaging features. As they provide their public IP addresses I thought it'd be straightforward to add some iptables rules and then I realized their list doesn't specify any ports and also I don't know which ones are for callings. Note that I must preserve messaging features. Any ideas on how to block calls?

Also, someone here mentioned that I should use QoS instead of blocking. What does he mean? Something like a very restrictive token bucket for whatsapp calls traffic?

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    You'll find this very difficult to achieve. WhatsApp uses the same channel used for chat, for the initial call setup. More info And since Facebook bought WhatsApp, it got moved into FB's infrastructure. That list of IPs is all of Facebook's IPs. Jul 5, 2016 at 20:24
  • I have seen it implemented in several networks, so I assume it isn't impossible to achieve. So sad I can't to contact with those network managers
    – mrbolichi
    Jul 5, 2016 at 20:38
  • Did you trace any of the activity you want to block? With wireshark etc. you can see what exactly is going on when you place such a call, and that may give you some ideas on where to start.
    – JayMcTee
    Jul 6, 2016 at 13:05
  • Since you won't be able to differentiate between voice and chat calls you will instead need to throttle the connection so that voice is unusable. How much is hard to say, but put all whatsapp traffic in the same bucket and give high burst and low overall.
    – Fredrik
    Nov 8, 2018 at 8:30

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