does anyone here use a personal VPN for security/privacy? if so, who do you get it from and how much do you pay per month?

considering getting one of these in the near future and was wondering what personal experiences people have had

7/20/2009 12:34:41 AM

pfSense is free.

most responses will probably be logmein/hamachi though.

7/20/2009 12:47:28 AM

yeah, i use pfsense + openVPN.

hamachi is excellent, however... and it's just about the easiest thing to set up ever...

(and it's free)

7/20/2009 1:02:15 AM

is pfSense suitable for "high bandwidth" applications?

[Edited on July 20, 2009 at 1:14 AM. Reason : torrenting, perhaps ]

7/20/2009 1:05:30 AM

it's all dependent on your WAN connection speed. openvpn is pretty damn robust.

i have 512kbps upload, and if i want to, i can completely saturate that over my tunnel.

i know that pfsense is used as a routing platform in quite a few enterprise deployments. basically, the more ram/cpu you throw at it, the more capacity you have.

7/20/2009 1:18:07 AM

in what sense do you use it? I use it sometimes but more for connecting to my home network when Im on campus. I use cisco's vpn but i have a proper cisco router. used to use windows vpn but for same purpose. are you trying to get into your network or out to the internet? If its the second, look into a proxy server as well.

7/20/2009 1:20:17 AM

yeah, if you're just trying to tunnel your net traffic through your home connection, you could also just ssh into a box you have at home and use socks.

^i, too, (used to) use a cisco router, but i have boycotted the cisco client due to its lack of 64-bit support and the way they're trying to force the anyconnect licensing model onto customers.

7/20/2009 1:22:25 AM

I'm moving into an apartment where free wifi is provided. Not too sure how I feel about the apartment manager being able to see all of my internet traffic, complaining if I'm downloading stuff via bittorrent (all legal, of course, but still resource intensive), etc

just looking to add a layer of security and anonymity

7/20/2009 1:22:29 AM

ah, in that case, you're going to need to pay someone for an external vpn.

i've heard good things about witopia, and they're fairly cheap ($60/year for an openvpn SSL tunnel)

if you get pfsense (or even a router that can run dd-wrt), you can set up a tun device on there and have it silently route all of your traffic through the tunnel. i do this with the VPN tunnel i have back to work - it stays connected on my pfsense box all the time, and i just have static routes for all of the internal networks at work set to use the VPN tunnel as the gateway. it's awesome.

7/20/2009 1:24:44 AM

^yeah, I guess I was too general when I first asked the question. thanks for helping me narrow it down. I'll check out Witopia and see how their TOS strikes me. $60/year sounds pretty decent though

7/20/2009 1:28:26 AM

http://www.personalvpn.com/index.php?app=ccp0&ns=display&ref=termsofuse

7/20/2009 1:32:51 AM

looks like a lot of VPN sites including Witopia are perhaps understandably cracking down on torrenting, blocking sites like TPB and mininova and blocking bittorrent traffic

if I'm going to bother to pay for a VPN I'm going to want to use it for pretty much everything I do online

7/20/2009 3:24:23 AM

^ problem is they dont wanna get yelled at for allowing users to do it anonymously, which VPN kinda does.

Evan, I know I grabbed a copy of the old stuff before they did away with it. Its also on my laptop which is XP so no x64 worries there.

7/20/2009 5:51:28 AM

Search for proxy services if you're looking to pay a little. VPN really isn't what you're looking for imo.

7/20/2009 7:24:54 AM

Quote :

"blocking sites like TPB and mininova"

that's because you shouldn't use public trackers in the first place - they're trying to help you.

7/20/2009 11:26:22 AM

+1 Hamachi

It's also free, and possibly not as robust as pfSense or openVPN, but definitely easier to use.

7/20/2009 12:17:39 PM

Quote :

"you shouldn't use public trackers"

I don't, I think you're about 2 or 3 branches down in my invite tree at what My concern is if they're blocking BT traffic in general it may not be a service I want to pay for.

7/20/2009 12:39:56 PM

Does anybody know the overhead for these solutions? Curios as compared to traditional IPSEC/L2TP/etc.

7/21/2009 8:10:22 AM

Quote :

"Does anybody know the overhead for these solutions? Curios as compared to traditional IPSEC/L2TP/etc."

which solutions?

7/21/2009 10:04:07 AM

openVPN still the best option here?

7/20/2016 4:23:38 PM

hidemyass


.com

7/20/2016 9:42:04 PM

After reading
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/comcast-lobbies-for-right-to-share-your-data-in-exchange-for-discounts/

This topic might be a lot more wanted soon.

8/3/2016 5:23:03 PM

I run a t1.micro in aws in the spot market for ~$0.05/day and tunnel traffic through it when I'm traveling

8/3/2016 6:46:53 PM

^doesn't that just mean they can trace your shit to Amazon, which would then give you up if subpoenaed?

8/9/2016 8:21:09 PM

I guess if you're ordering someone's murder or selling stolen credit cards that might be relevant

8/10/2016 7:57:55 AM

haha I misunderstood the purpose of the VPN in this context - I presume it's strictly to have secure surfing when accessing via a public wifi like the airport.

8/10/2016 6:02:43 PM