*** VPN Thread ***

I'm in the market for a VPN and have narrowed it down to Nord and Proton. Nord is cheaper but Proton has some advantages such as offering a Linux client. Both seem to be outside the fourteen eyes. Nord seems to be the market leader. Any opinions, particularly on Proton? Thanks.
 
I just switched to Nord from PIA. The features seem comparable. Although, you don't have an option to set the type of encryption on Nord, like you do on PIA, but the standard used is good, so I guess that's fine. The real clincher was Nord had 3 years for £82, plus £45 cashback from Topcashback, bargain.
 
Not heard of Proton but can recommend Nord. To use Nord on Linux you could try OpenVPN and then just download their config files for whichever server you need.
 
Yes I use a BTOR HG612 modem, pfSense router and both PIA and VPN-Unlimited VPN clients on the router setup as alternative gateways to the unencrypted WAN. I use these VPN gateways for certain policy based routes as required e.g. all local traffic to the destination *.astraweb.eu goes out through a gateway group that uses PIA as a primary and VPN-Unlimited if that is down otherwise goes nowhere. Plusnet is my ISP. Oh and also run an OpenVPN server successfully on the pfsense router if that is of interest.
 
BigT said:
Yes I use a BTOR HG612 modem, pfSense router and both PIA and VPN-Unlimited VPN clients on the router setup as alternative gateways to the unencrypted WAN. I use these VPN gateways for certain policy based routes as required e.g. all local traffic to the destination *.astraweb.eu goes out through a gateway group that uses PIA as a primary and VPN-Unlimited if that is down otherwise goes nowhere. Plusnet is my ISP. Oh and also run an OpenVPN server successfully on the pfsense router if that is of interest.
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Wow that’s one hell of a setup! I’m looking for a modem/router or a router to use with the One hub(that you get with plusnet) I want to have a vpn enabled switch so the place is secure along with family protection.
 
You don’t really want to add a router into the mix and keep the one hub in my opinion because:
  • It would be redundant if the router you add is an all in one with a modem too
  • Even if it doesn’t have a modem built in, you are introducing double NAT for no good reason
  • Add another routing device on your network and you add latency (albeit probably negligible)
  • You just add potential for issues that could be hard to trace in the future e.g. you end up with two DHCP servers by accident
I personally think a blanket wide network VPN is a bad idea. You’d get more “protection” from nasties on the families machines by implementing something like a PiHole with a good blocklist of nasty places. After a lot of tuning my PiHole blocks over one million domains and on a few occasions has stopped the family’s machines from loading a nasty link in an email. Then you could use quad 9 DNS servers as your upstream DNS servers and have a decent level of network wide protection. Plus things like iPlayer and online banking will still work which sometimes stops doing so behind a VPN.
 
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BigT said:
You don’t really want to add a router into the mix and keep the one hub in my opinion because:
  • It would be redundant if the router you add is an all in one with a modem too
  • Even if it doesn’t have a modem built in, you are introducing double NAT for no good reason
  • Add another routing device on your network and you add latency (albeit probably negligible)
  • You just add potential for issues that could be hard to trace in the future e.g. you end up with two DHCP servers by accident
I personally think a blanket wide network VPN is a bad idea. You’d get more “protection” from nasties on the families machines by implementing something like a PiHole with a good blocklist of nasty places. After a lot of tuning my PiHole blocks over one million domains and on a few occasions has stopped the family’s machines from loading a nasty link in an email. Then you could use quad 9 DNS servers as your upstream DNS servers and have a decent level of network wide protection. Plus things like iPlayer and online banking will still work which sometimes stops doing so behind a VPN.
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Reading this is like discovering I have a second forum username and accidentally posted under it.

Depending on the circumstances, running one of the binhex docker images (NZB/Torrent client for example) with the built in Privoxy proxy and setting the devices you need to use it as a proxy is a better fit. The advantages are very simple, no encryption overhead on the client devices, you can roll out VPN encryption on a per device basis - even if they don’t support modern VPN standards and enabling or disabling it is as simple as disabling the proxy on the client. It all depends on why you need to use a VPN.
 
malachi said:
I'm moving to Switzerland in a few weeks, so I am looking for a VPN. NordVPN is still recommended?
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What is it you want a VPN for just because you're moving to Switzerland? Not being facetious but if the answer is "to watch iPlayer" then it is a different recommendation to "because the Swiss are complete control freaks and I don't want them logging my browsing history"
 
BigT said:
What is it you want a VPN for just because you're moving to Switzerland? Not being facetious but if the answer is "to watch iPlayer" then it is a different recommendation to "because the Swiss are complete control freaks and I don't want them logging my browsing history"
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Been looking to get one for a while not because I'm moving to Switzerland but I travel a lot around the world anyway so I might aswell get one now.
 
malachi said:
Been looking to get one for a while not because I'm moving to Switzerland but I travel a lot around the world anyway so I might aswell get one now.
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I am finding, more and more, that NordVPN's IP addresses are being blocked by Amazon and the like. You may find that if you get a VPN from the likes of Nord etc, that you have to get a static IP option as well.
 
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