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Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

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Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#191

Post by _jcwu »

whocares123 wrote: post #158
kinkora wrote: post #145

PIA (Private Internet Access) and am a happy customer for 3rd year running. Why do I choose them? Besides the ease of use over multiple platforms, they are the only VPN (I am aware of) that has held up in court that they do not store any logs when asked to handover personal information. Sources: [1] https://torrentfreak.com/private-internet-access-no-logging-... [2] https://www.scribd.com/doc/303226103/Fake-bomb-thre…

I have 1GB fiber, do they offer 1GB speeds? How badly would using them as my VPN affect my speed?

If you have 1GB, then forget anything OpenVPN. Use IPSec or Wireguard.

With OpenVPN you will bottleneck at ~300Mbit\s. With IPSec and Wireguard I have had no issues getting ~900Mbit\s to my own server.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#193

Post by chrisper »

mrweasel wrote: post #189
whocares123 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 1GB fiber, do they offer 1GB speeds? How badly would using them as my VPN affect my speed?

I doubt it would affect your speed much. How often are you able to utilise 1Gbps anyway? Sure in theory you'd see a slow down, but given that most of the sites and service you use aren't able to deliver 1Gbps to you directly, the decrease in speed is most likely lower than you'd think.

>but given that most of the sites and service you use aren't able to deliver 1Gbps to you directly

You would be surprised how wrong this statement is.

Especially if you are a gamer, almost any platform can max out a Gbit connection easily.

Besides at those speeds you start seeing all kinds of issues (like OpenVPN implementation being very inefficient).

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#195

Post by CloudNetworking »

woodruffw wrote: post #4

I use Algo[1] on a variety of VPS providers. It supports IPSec, but I only use Wireguard through it. Supporting OpenVPN is an explicit anti-goal for Algo[2]. I generally strongly recommend against using VPN providers on false advertisement grounds -- VPNs fundamentally cannot provide strong anonymity properties, but that doesn't stop many providers from listing anonymity as a selling point. In terms of the property V…

> you don't want to be tied to someone else's weak cipher or insecure protocol choices.

That's not part of the threat model for 99.999999% of VPN users though.

Tracing back the usage of the VPN to them is their main worry and what they have to fight against.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#198

Post by dspillett »

_jcwu wrote: post #191
whocares123 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 1GB fiber, do they offer 1GB speeds? How badly would using them as my VPN affect my speed?

If you have 1GB, then forget anything OpenVPN. Use IPSec or Wireguard. With OpenVPN you will bottleneck at ~300Mbit\s. With IPSec and Wireguard I have had no issues getting ~900Mbit\s to my own server.

> you will bottleneck at ~300Mbit\s.

Any idea where the bottleneck was there? CPU use? Protocol latency? I'd be interested to see some test results around that if you know of any that have been published.

A little anecdotal information: some years ago I did a CPU-load test with OpenVPN on a diminutive Atom-based netbook as the client, and it maxed out at around 95mbit/s on a 100mbit/s network (actually a gbit network, but the netbook only had a 100mbit NIC itself) while just doing simple bulk transfers.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#199

Post by avaika »

There's no silver bullet. It all depends on why you need VPN.

Personally I use it for privacy (I don't trust any ISP in the country and especially local government). I host my own VPN on a virtual node outside country (even outside continent). It makes the connection a bit slower, than without any tunnels, but I got used to it. Also I have to pay extra efforts to maintain it, but that's the privacy cost.

Moreover, with own server it's possible to achieve things which are usually unavailable with paid VPN services. E.g. run openvpn through ssl/ssh tunnel or something similar. Or use just ssh tunnel or anything like that. It helps to mask the traffic and ease your life in case of question from some people.

Depending on your country popular services might be simply unavailable and you'd need at least couple of them at the same time to ensure connection redundancy. Also (depending on what you're doing and local laws) you might have a hard time explaining your country secret agency why you're paying vpn proxy company, while explanation for hosting service might save a lot of time for you (and avoid additional questions). But that's (hopefully) extreme cases.

Also you receive static IP in case with hosting. But you might rotate it as often as you want by just recreating the machine.

But also keep in mind, that some services ban popular hosting (and VPN) providers IP ranges.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#200

Post by system2 »

Jonnax wrote: post #168
whocares123 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 1GB fiber, do they offer 1GB speeds? How badly would using them as my VPN affect my speed?

IPsec at 1gbps needs a powerful router. A Juniper SRX 320 that I have can only can reach about 500mbps.

I doubt they cost $3 per month though.
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