1.) Yes. Almost always. 2.) I use ssh to the tunnelr.com proxy/vpn service. It's usually just a socks5 proxy link bound to the internal interface or localhost.

1.) Yes. Almost always. 2.) I use ssh to the tunnelr.com proxy/vpn service. It's usually just a socks5 proxy link bound to the internal interface or localhost. Using a VPN service is very useful since I get a choice of exit nodes all over the planet which really helps a lot when traveling. I do a simple hop count (tracert) to a few physically close nodes and pick the closest available node. https://tunnelr.com https://tunnelr.com If you don't like using ssh, they also support IPSec, L2TP, PPTP, OpenVPN, and plain old unencrypted SOCKS (4a/5). 3.) My only real choice for ISP is Verizon Wireless, a cellular phone network, through an G3 (EVDO) or G4 (LTE) dongle. Verizon Wireless does all sorts of strange mangling, shaping, and recompression on network traffic (such as degrading images with higher compression ratios). The reason why they do this is simple; they expect the end device to be a smart phone, and it is in the vast majority cases, except for their dongle based customers.