Definition
Meek is a pluggable transport that disguises censored but lawful traffic as ordinary HTTPS requests to a major, hard-to-block web platform. It does this with domain fronting: the connection appears, from the outside, to be talking to a popular cloud or content service, while the real circumvention endpoint is named only inside the encrypted request.
How meek routes traffic
A meek client relays data through a shared platform by presenting a permitted front domain in the visible TLS handshake and placing the true destination in the encrypted Host header. The platform forwards the request to a meek server, which unwraps it and passes the traffic to the anonymity network. Because the outer appearance is just HTTPS to a mainstream service, a censor cannot block it without also breaking access to that valued service.
Trade-offs and status
Meek trades speed for reach: tunneling through a third-party web platform adds latency and the operator may bear hosting costs, so it is usually a fallback when faster transports are blocked. Its viability also depends on platforms permitting the SNI and Host to differ; after several large providers disabled that behavior, meek's available fronts narrowed considerably, though the design remains an instructive model of dual-use circumvention.
For the underlying mechanism and a comparison transport, see the domain fronting and obfs4 glossary entries.
In Simple Terms
Meek is a pluggable transport that disguises censored but lawful traffic as ordinary HTTPS requests to a major, hard-to-block web platform. It does this with…