61–66 of 66 posts
What's the best free peer-to-peer VPN? Not a VPN that supports P2P filesharing, but a VPN where the users are the "servers", like Hola used to be before it started sucking (can't even select country now without paying).
Is this really something desirable? It seems like it would be asking for somebody to commit crimes using your connection (without the plausible deniability/justification that you are running a VPN company).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I presume the majority of that difference is because there's a healthy market for VPNs with practically no barrier to entry, whereas your ISP is a monopoly usually, or a duopoly if you're lucky.
Not outside the US. E.g., in our apartment, we can subscribe to fiber, cable, and DSL. On fiber and DSL, there are many ISPs to pick from. However, the prices are still similar to the US (you just get a lot more bandwidth for the same price). I think it is more that the costs of running an ISP are much higher, you do not only need peering, but the networks including the last mile need to be put in the ground and main…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't be suggesting that the first time someone attempts to do something like this on a large scale, that Mullvad's team would be surprised. You surely can't be suggesting that this didn't come up in meetings, and that the opportunity cost wasn't determined and taken into account when offering this trial service. The painlessness of the service, along with the encouragement to generate as many new account numbers…
I'm not suggesting that they didn't think of it or that it would be surprising, I'm suggesting that if it were to be abused, it could downgrade the experience of paid users until they noticed and fixed the situation. I just believe that VPNs which offer only some servers to free users or limit bandwith have a good model.
Is there any reason to trust a free VPN service? At least with a paid service I might think that my money ... could be enough to sustain the company. At least it could be. I would assume a free service would have to be selling your information just as a matter of policy / economics.
You could extend the argument on price though. You can easily pay an ISP $50/mo for broadband, so why should you trust a paid VPN that will handle all your traffic for only $5-8/mo on top? Is the difference all infrastructural costs? What about those cheap $3/mo VPNs? Where do you draw the line?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I presume the majority of that difference is because there's a healthy market for VPNs with practically no barrier to entry, whereas your ISP is a monopoly usually, or a duopoly if you're lucky.
Not outside the US. E.g., in our apartment, we can subscribe to fiber, cable, and DSL. On fiber and DSL, there are many ISPs to pick from. However, the prices are still similar to the US (you just get a lot more bandwidth for the same price). I think it is more that the costs of running an ISP are much higher, you do not only need peering, but the networks including the last mile need to be put in the ground and main…