the meaning of would

[balakrishnanijk]

The following is a sentence from the Washington Post. Could you please make clear the meaning of "would" used here?

Whenever Maysam, a prominent Iranian blogger, connects to the Internet from his office in the bazaar, he switches on a special connection that for years "would" bypass the Islamic republic’s increasingly effective firewall.

[5jj]

Typical past behaviour. It was a characteristic of the connection.

[balakrishnanijk]

If that is past, why are the other two verbs present in meaning ? Wouldn't it be more logical to write:
Whenever Maysam, a prominent Iranian blogger, connected to the Internet from his office in the bazaar, he switcheed on a special connection that for years would bypass the Islamic republic’s increasingly effective firewall.

Here is the rest of the news:


But recently the software, which allowed him and millions of other Iranians to go online through portals elsewhere in the world, stopped working. When it sporadically returns, speeds are so excruciatingly slow that sites such as Facebook and Balatarin.com – which evaluates unofficial news and rumors in Farsi — become unusable.

[5jj]

He still connects to the internet, and he still switches on the special connection. Although it stopped working for a time, it still returns sporadically, so he still hopes it might work for him.

[AlexAD]

Not a teacher, nor a native.

Here is the excerpt from the OALD:
would - used for talking about things that often happened in the past.
Synonymous with 'used to'.