We are developing a consumer digital wellbeing app and are evaluating an optional feature that deliberately slows network traffic when explicitly enabled by the user.
The proposed architecture is:
NEPacketTunnelProvider
device wide traffic
no MDM or per-app VPN
no remote VPN server
packet processing/forwarding performed locally on device
no application layer inspection
no traffic profiling or advertising use
no network data uploaded to our servers
bounded latency/bandwidth shaping only
user can disable it immediately
The goal is user controlled “intentional bandwidth” rather than security, privacy filtering, circumvention, or remote VPN access.
I’d like to clarify:
Is NEPacketTunnelProvider an appropriate public API for this kind of local device wide bandwidth pacing?
Is it supported to consume packets via packetFlow, process/forward them locally, and send them to the public Internet without a remote VPN endpoint?
Is intentional bandwidth/latency shaping considered an acceptable use of the Network Extension entitlement?
Would this still be treated as a “VPN service” for App Review purposes even though no traffic is routed through a remote VPN service?
If so, would the organization-enrollment requirement for VPN apps apply?
Is there another public API Apple recommends for this use case?
I understand that the App Review questions may ultimately need to be answered by App Review rather than the forums. My main goal here is to validate whether this is a supported NetworkExtension architecture before investing in the packet processing implementation.
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