Messages leave with a clock icon and never arrive, the app says “Connecting…”, calls will not go — and it is unclear what broke: the phone, the network, the app or the road to the servers. Below: how to tell these cases apart in five minutes, what WhatsApp itself says about VPNs, what our measurement of 29 September showed, and what can honestly be said about calls and what cannot.
In short. A clock next to a message instead of a check mark means, in WhatsApp’s own words, that the message is not being delivered — the trouble is the connection. Start with the checks: a browser, switching networks, data saver, updating. On VPNs WhatsApp is blunt: its help says it is not possible to use WhatsApp with VPN services — so we do not promise that it will work with Mayak. Our measurement: from the Russian machine WhatsApp’s addresses opened over IPv6 and did not over IPv4; from the Dutch, Polish and German ones they all opened. We did not measure calls — we cannot say they work or that they do not.
We make Mayak — a private network with an app for Android. Everything said about us below is said with measurements: what answers from our machines and what those measurements do not say. You can check it on your own network for free. 3 days free after you confirm your email, no card needed. The trial is free and needs no card; without an email it is 1 day.
🍎 On iPhone, Mayak works through the subscription link from your account page. The real Happ (publisher Flyfrog LLC) is not in the Russian App Store — searching that word there brings up look-alike apps from other publishers. INCY (publisher LLC ITDEV) works instead: checked on 22 September 2026.
What exactly broke
We read WhatsApp’s help on connection problems (the Android section, 29 September 2026) and sorted it into pictures.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| A clock next to messages instead of a check mark | The messages are not being delivered. WhatsApp’s help names a poor internet connection as the most common reason |
| Sites open, other apps work, WhatsApp does not | The help advises contacting your mobile provider, who may be able to change some settings. It also names the APN settings |
| Nothing on Wi-Fi, fine on mobile (or the other way round) | It is the particular network. The help advises a different Wi-Fi network or a hotspot |
| Fails only with a VPN on | See the VPN section: WhatsApp itself says it is not possible to use it with such services |
| Chats go, calls do not | A separate case with a list of its own in the help — the calls section |
A five-minute check
The order is ours; the steps themselves come from WhatsApp’s help.
- Open any page in a browser. It loads — the internet is there.
- Send a message and look: a clock or a check mark.
- Switch networks. Mobile data instead of Wi-Fi and the other way round; the help also suggests a hotspot.
- Turn Data saver off and make sure Wi-Fi stays on in sleep mode — both are on its list.
- Update WhatsApp and make sure your Android version is supported.
- Ask the other person to do the same: the help notes separately that the problem may be on their side.
- Then the tunnel. Switch it off for a minute and see whether anything changes.
Where a VPN fits
The same WhatsApp help page carries a note: “It’s not possible to use WhatsApp with VPN services.” We quote it as it stands — WhatsApp said it. (The Russian version of the page words it as “not designed for use with VPN services”.) So we will not promise you that “it will work with Mayak”, as we promise nothing about any other service.
The mechanics are these. A tunnel changes two things: the address a request leaves from, and the road to the server. If your road did not go through, another one may turn out better. If the trouble is your Wi-Fi, your phone or the app itself, a tunnel will not change it. You check by comparing in the same minute: with the tunnel and without.
If it works without the tunnel and not with it, you can send only WhatsApp around the tunnel: Settings → “Split tunneling”, tick the app, then press “Disconnect” and “Connect” — the setting applies at the next connection (how it works). Everything else stays in the tunnel. WhatsApp is not in our ready-made RU Apps set — we checked the set’s file in the app on 29 September 2026 — so by default it goes through the tunnel.
Our measurement: where WhatsApp answers and where it does not
On 29 September 2026, from 19:17 to 19:30 Moscow time, from each of our machines we knocked on WhatsApp’s addresses: on the four through which the site and media open — three attempts each — and, separately, on the message server g.whatsapp.net — by TCP on ports 443 and 5222. Control sites with no connection to WhatsApp went alongside. IPv4 and IPv6 were measured separately.
| Measured from | IPv4: site and media | IPv4: message server | IPv6 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Our machine in Russia | 0 of 12 | Never opened | Everything opened |
| Netherlands | 12 of 12 | Opened | Everything opened |
| Poland | 12 of 12 | Opened | The machine has no IPv6 |
| Germany | 12 of 12 | Opened | Everything opened |
| A work machine in Moscow that reaches the network through Kazakhstan | 12 of 12 | Opened | Not measured |
We re-checked the Russian row. Three rounds 15 seconds apart and several more checks over seven minutes: over IPv4 not one connection to the message server opened. The control sites (Cloudflare, GitHub, Yandex) opened 9 times out of 9, an echo packet to a WhatsApp address took 16–20 ms, and the machine itself has no rule that mentions those networks and no special routes. Over IPv6, in the same minutes, everything opened for it, the message server included: 6 attempts out of 6.
It is the address, not the service. From the Russian machine we tried WhatsApp addresses handed out by the resolvers of our other machines. Addresses from two of its networks did not open, an address from a third did, and the site answered through it 3 times out of 3. The Dutch and German machines opened them all. So one service’s addresses behave differently, and which of them your phone gets is decided by DNS: on our machines different resolvers handed out different addresses.
We measured the message server g.whatsapp.net by TCP, not as a “site”. It is not a website: a web request to it fails on every machine, including the working one in Moscow. Reading that as a finding would be a mistake, and we leave it out of the count.
Not only our machines. In the open OONI database, where volunteers send checks from their own connections, from 1 to 28 September 2026 there are 24,131 checks of www.whatsapp.com from Russia: in 20,027 the answer differed from the control, in 3,815 all was as usual, and 289 ended in an error of the check itself. OONI’s separate test, which checks the app’s servers, registration and the web version, over the same time: 45,835 checks, 36,205 flagged with an anomaly. Which of the three parts and why is not visible in those numbers, and we did not break it down. This is not a census of the country: not everyone runs checks.
⚠️ What this measurement does NOT say. The Russian machine stands in a data centre at one host: one resolver and one network. “All over Russia, for everyone” does not follow; mobile operators and home providers each have their own picture, and it changes by the hour. We give no shares or percentages “for the country”. Nor is this a check of calls: we measured TCP connections, and calls are another matter.
What the tunnel changes here. That traffic leaves from our node’s address we measured with a live tunnel on 22 September (in the Telegram write-up); today we showed that from the nodes’ addresses WhatsApp answers. We did not measure the whole chain “phone → tunnel → WhatsApp”: two measured links are not the same thing as a measured chain. We described a similar picture for Instagram, where IPv4 and IPv6 also behaved differently.
Check it on your own network. Our measurement is about our machines and knows nothing about your network: you find that out only by trying it with your own operator and on your own Wi-Fi. The account is created right in the app; we ask for no payment details for the trial. A confirmed email opens the access — 3 free days. An email is optional: without one the trial is 1 day.
Calls: what can be said without a measurement
We did not measure calls — neither through the tunnel nor without it. So we do not claim that they work through Mayak, and we do not claim that they do not. Our measurement above is about TCP connections to the message and site addresses; it says nothing about calls.
What WhatsApp itself has. Its help on video calls (29 September 2026) has a list of its own, and advises both people to go through it: turn the phone off and on, force-quit and reopen the app, check for a stable connection, switch the permissions off and on, update WhatsApp, turn off battery saver and Bluetooth. For the router and firewall it names the ports to let through for calls: UDP and TCP 3478, 3480 and 3484. You can check your home router yourself; an operator’s network you cannot.
If chats go and a call does not, that is no proof that “the tunnel is broken” or “the network is broken”. Go through the list above, then compare a call over Wi-Fi and over mobile data, with the tunnel and without it.
What we do not promise
- That WhatsApp will work for you. We make no such promise about any service, and WhatsApp itself says it cannot be used with such services.
- That calls will go. We did not measure them.
- That our numbers are a picture of the country. They are addresses in data centres on one evening, and a tunnel does not cure your Wi-Fi, provider or phone.
What we tested
- WhatsApp’s addresses answering from five machines, IPv4 and IPv6 separately, with control sites: 29 September 2026, from 19:17 to 19:30 Moscow time. The Russian machine again, by address and by its own rules.
- The open OONI database for 1–28 September 2026.
- Our RU Apps set — by the file in the app: WhatsApp is not in it.
- WhatsApp’s help on connections and on video calls — from the text of the pages, 29 September 2026.
What we do not know
- How calls work through our tunnel and without it.
- The whole path “phone → tunnel → WhatsApp” — we measured only links.
- How your operator is doing and why the addresses behave differently: a data centre does not show that.
- What happens tomorrow. The measurement took a quarter of an hour.
Short answers
Why is WhatsApp not working? Most often the connection — that is what WhatsApp’s help says: a clock instead of a check mark means the messages are not being delivered. The five-minute checks separate the phone from the network.
WhatsApp does not work with a VPN — why? WhatsApp says it is not possible to use it with such services. Compare with the tunnel and without it; if it works without, send only WhatsApp around the tunnel.
Calls do not work in WhatsApp. We did not measure calls. WhatsApp’s help has a list of steps of its own and ports for the router — in the calls section.
Will Mayak help? We will not promise it; you can check it on your own network for free. A similar write-up on another service — YouTube not working even with a VPN; if the tunnel itself is what fails — VPN stopped working and four checks that it really came up.