5 ms·
Time to shell out for a VPN service.
by jonny_eh 9y ago
Time to shell out for a VPN service.
- r00fus 9y agoAre VPN Routers a good option, or do you recommend VPN on each device?
- ktta 9y agoDepends on the traffic from devices. If you don't have crazy high traffic, flash your router with openwrt and install wireguard. If the flash is too small, you can compile your own image with wireguard selected which doesn't need as much flash space. Next you can choose a cloud provider, which is metered (GCE, AWS, etc), or non-metered like OVH, or Digital Ocean(they don't charge you if you go over the 1TB for now). Or you can choose a VPN service provider like Mullvad who have wireguard option (PIA should be getting it soon), if you trust them. Be careful in choosing your provider since you might be annoyed with the latency over time, or just get used to it. There are tutorials for all this.
- woah 9y agoNetflix and other video sites will be blocked from a lot of VPS providers. You may be better off going with a professional service that can keep their ips clean
- ktta 9y agoTrue, but it can be mitigated by setting the routing table for Netflix IPs to avoid the tunnel. There's no standard way this can be done, but it's not impossible.
- rbritton 9y agoI did this for a while, and it was a decent headache to maintain. I had pfSense running at the Comcast edge and configured it to route all but specifically whitelisted traffic through a VPN I controlled. Speed was slower than max but acceptable due to choosing a VPS provider close to me, but the maintenance on the whitelist was cumbersome.
- 411mrc 9y agoYou can mitigate the speed issue by adding your own DNS local caches and then start blocking ads, trackers and malware sites and whomever you want (FB is added to the spyware list) using publicly available lists. All of this speeds browsing considerably. A personalized router is very powerful.
- Diederich 9y ago> your own DNS local caches Doesn't that mean your ISP will now see what domains you are looking up?
- ktta 9y agoNot if you use DNS-over-HTTPS with cloudflare or google. https://github.com/aarond10/https_dns_proxy https://github.com/aarond10/https_dns_proxy
- cwingrav 9y agoJust clarifying your comment for others: Your ISP would still see the IPs of the sites your packets visit unless you are using an encrypted VPN connection. The DNS-over-HTTPS is a great addition to a VPN. (the VPN comment was several levels up so some might miss it)
- Diederich 9y agoRighto!
- ktta 9y agoOpenwrt by default caches using dnsmasq, but the blocklist is a good idea. The problem is, even the blocklist is sometimes too big for the tiny flashes of some routers.
- danharaj 9y agoI use a Qotom mini pc as a router. I configure it with NixOS. It's amazing.
- anarchimedes 9y agoI'm interested in the implementation of this, but do not have the technical background to begin. Would you have any go to resources for a beginner?
- jonjojr 9y agocareful because I already see this coming: "In order to server our customers better and provide the best possible experience, VPN services will be blocked and will require a Business Tier service. We feel that unless you have a legitimate business reason to anonymize your network traffic we will provide this service in order to protect our subscribers and network integrity. Click Here to Speak to our Sales Representative"
- rmcpherson 9y agoOne of the problems I've run into with using a vpn service is that many services block IPs from common vpn services. While this may be due to abuse originating from those IPs this still seems like a lazy approach to abuse prevention. One approach that could work around this in many cases is to run a VPS with a private VPN server on a cloud provider. This is beyond the technical ability of the average user though and costs more than most VPN services.
- trsse 9y agoIn practice this isn't much of a problem, and I get it with Netflix. I turn off my VPN if I am watching Netflix on my computer and I don't think my privacy suffers too much for it. It feels bad not to have 100% coverage but I honestly don't care who knows what I watch / how often I watch Netflix.
- rmcpherson 9y agoIt is more of a problem if you want to run the VPN on your router upstream of your devices, which simplifies management and ensures all devices are protected from ISP snooping, including devices where I don't control the software like a Chromecast. I had to disable router-level vpn for exactly this reason, which is frustrating. Amusingly enough, when I did have it on, my Chromecast showed weather data for the vpn endpoint so it's using IP-based geolocation for weather. It could be smarter.
- troncjb 9y ago> my Chromecast showed weather data for the vpn endpoint That is pretty awesome. I feel your pain and that is why I haven't gone and flashed my router even though I finally bought one that will let me.
- pgm8705 9y agoI run a private VPN server on Digital Ocean and still get blocked by some sites. Zillow.com comes to mind as one I was unable to access recently.