Looks like this thread has experienced a coup d’etat for geopolitical aims :-). Getting in back to my original question on the features topic…
As @ned14 detailed in his replies to my question above (before all the geopolitics), that is not the case. As a real world example OpenVPN-UDP can only successfully break through China’s great firewall using pluggable transport obfuscation (via Obfsproxy). Tor also uses pluggable transports (Obfsproxy V4) that apparently allowed it to continue to work when Iran and Kazakhstan implemented deep packet inspection in an attempt to block it.
I do not see how the SAFE Network can avoid being singled out as an “unknown protocol” and blocked without also supporting pluggable transport protocol obfuscation like these other projects have been forced to adopt just to stay connected. As @ned14 says above, “your ISP is highly likely to throttle and shape any unrecognised traffic”.
As a expatriate/software developer I am frequently required to live in some places where I count myself lucky if they just throttle my VPN vs blocking it altogether. That is part of what caught my attention with the MaidSafe project in the first place: I assumed @dirvine vision included being robust against ISP and country level blocking, but this thread has raised some doubts about that assumption. If I am understanding you correctly the RUDP V2.0 plan does not include pluggable transport protocol obfuscation. Instead the preferable recommendation is to move to unadulterated/T3 lines wherever possible?