Live data from Hacker News

WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app

mullvad.net

1–10 of 141 posts

Re: WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app

#2
Tangential, but I recently discovered Mullvad. For years, I've used whichever mainstream VPN provider had a good deal on come renewal time, and cycled through a few of the usual suspects. Recently, I was with Surfshark, and was really struggling to get download rates above a few hundred K/sec - and sometimes even worse. I didn't even suspect the VPN at first, but ultimately tried a different provider as a diagnostic step.

I randomly came across a recommendation for Mullvad from reddit, and signed up for a month. Hot damn if my download rate didn't shoot up to 15-20 MB/sec (that's megabytes, not bits) - essentially close to maxxing out my fibre.

Turns out you really do get what you pay for - and I doubt I'll be leaving Mullvad any time soon.

(no affiliation - just a happy and surprised customer!)

Re: WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app

#3
I use (and really like!) Mullvad, but have never tried the app, preferring to use my existing OpenVPN clients with the profiles Mullvad provides.

This isn't because I have any reason to mistrust their app, but just because if I've already got a perfectly serviceable client on my device, why add another binary to do the same thing?

But I would be interested to hear, from folks who have used the app, what you like and don't like about it. In particular, I've had some headaches setting up split tunneling/proxying via OpenVPN - I was never all that good at its config language - and I'm wondering if the Mullvad app might make those easier to achieve.

Re: WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app

#4
post #2

Tangential, but I recently discovered Mullvad. For years, I've used whichever mainstream VPN provider had a good deal on come renewal time, and cycled through a few of the usual suspects. Recently, I was with Surfshark, and was really struggling to get download rates above a few hundred K/sec - and sometimes even worse. I didn't even suspect the VPN at first, but ultimately tried a different provider as a diagnostic…

+1 for Mulvad, it Just Works and they are a great service provider.

(also no affiliation, just a happy customer)

Re: WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app

#5
post #2

Tangential, but I recently discovered Mullvad. For years, I've used whichever mainstream VPN provider had a good deal on come renewal time, and cycled through a few of the usual suspects. Recently, I was with Surfshark, and was really struggling to get download rates above a few hundred K/sec - and sometimes even worse. I didn't even suspect the VPN at first, but ultimately tried a different provider as a diagnostic…

Which exit point are you using? How close is it to you? I only get about 5MBps no matter which node I use and have suspected ISP throttling, but haven't tested too much since 5MBps is enough to get by with; this might make a good way to gather more info.

Re: WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app

#7
I’m wondering how this compares to Apple’s iCloud Private Relay.

Mullvad is trying to increase their transparency and make sure users can trust them which is great. But would there be a way for them to make it so that users do not have to trust them? What if the second server was hosted by another entity?

Re: WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app

#8

I use (and really like!) Mullvad, but have never tried the app, preferring to use my existing OpenVPN clients with the profiles Mullvad provides. This isn't because I have any reason to mistrust their app, but just because if I've already got a perfectly serviceable client on my device, why add another binary to do the same thing? But I would be interested to hear, from folks who have used the app, what you like and…

I've found their apps to be (subjectively) higher quality than most OpenVPN clients on platforms I care about (macOS, iOS, Windows). It's nice to have a consistent UI, and not have to think or care about specific profiles — it's easy for me to jump between servers much more easily (I typically connect relatively locally, but occasionally find that certain out IP addresses have been blacklisted from specific sites; it's trivial to "refresh" the connection to hop over to a different server and not have to think about it).

And, of course, easier (for me) to set up and configure. Maybe no _huge_ incentive to switch over to it if your setup works, but might be worth trying out if you're curious.

Re: WireGuard multihop available in the Mullvad app

#10

I’m wondering how this compares to Apple’s iCloud Private Relay. Mullvad is trying to increase their transparency and make sure users can trust them which is great. But would there be a way for them to make it so that users do not have to trust them? What if the second server was hosted by another entity?

I believe that with iCloud Private Relay, the second hop is a different company (Cloudflare/Akamai/Fastly). Whereas multihop offered by Mullvad and other VPN companies they own both hops which would make correlation easy for them.
Post reply on HN