*** VPN Thread ***

Rainmaker said:
I've probably posted in this thread before, but I usually use Mullvad and/or OVPN as their privacy is rock solid and the speeds are practically wirespeed gigabit using WireGuard. In common with most providers these days, however, they both struggle with iPlayer, Prime Video, etc.

I left Nord after their hacking fiasco, but now they've tightened things up and been independently audited, I grabbed the Cyber Deal (plus using code GROUPON for an extra couple of quid off). I hate the way they've made a stupid proprietary layer on top of WireGuard ('NordLynx'), and they don't offer port forwarding...

That said, all VoD products work instantly and in full HD and I've not been blocked anywhere. Their Linux CLI app is nice to use and undoubtedly maintains WireGuard's advantages. On a VM 1 gig connection connected to a UK/London server:

ce54274c-e5f1-4c31-b0e6-c0b8b2d4889e.png


I'd still stick to OVPN/Mullvad for anything privacy critical, but for general usage I can't knock Nord for the price.
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Likewise, impressed with Mullvad - crypto payment and the way accounts work is a great and refreshingly different setup. A friend uses it and he's been very happy with it for years. Nord's far from perfect (deffo not line speed on this gigabit!) but it is fast enough and hella cheap.
 
Nord + Quidco (currently 70%) is hard to argue with for a non bottom feeder and 6 devices, but yes, other options are probably worth considering if you actually have a genuine and potentially life altering need to privacy.
 
VyprVPN's Black Friday sale's just started, 60 USD (~£45) for a THREE YEAR plan if you sign up in the next 7 days (from date of posting). https://www.vyprvpn.com/buy-vpn-b

I used VyprVPN a few years ago when I went abroad, good client and some novel anti-detection / anti-firewall of China features (their "Chameleon" protocol), speeds were fine, iPlayer worked.

They rolled out Wireguard in May this year and they're Netflix & iPlayer friendly. https://www.vyprvpn.com/streaming-vpn/bbc-iplayer-vpn

They DO pass on DMCA notifications though so don't bother trying to torrent through them. (I'm actually OK with that)

Not used them for a few years but I'm probably going to end up signing up again to try them out, for the sake of £1.25 a month... (gotta catch 'em all)
 
~cw said:
VyprVPN... {snip}
They DO pass on DMCA notifications though so don't bother trying to torrent through them. (I'm actually OK with that)
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When they could just as easily (legally) run logless. Even ignoring the fact they're American, that alone made me never want to give them a penny; going back right to their inception when the 'scandal' of them ratting out paying customers first broke. Giganews lost a lot of respect for that in the wider community at the time. You could say it's ironic for a Usenet company to act that way, though I suppose if you can't torrent there's always Usenet for an extra $15 a month, amirite?
 
I need to get a vpn for my android boxes and for more privacy.

What do you guys recommend?

Looking at Surfshark, its seems to get decent reviews and its cheap also
 
Given Mullvad a try after being with NordVPN for 3 years. It's noticeably faster in every way, general browsing through to downloads, it probably hits around 95% of my max speed (900Mb down/110Mb up) whereas even the closest Nord servers would cap at about 70%.

It's more expensive but I like the option of using a number account and BTC payments.
 
SixTwoSix said:
Given Mullvad a try after being with NordVPN for 3 years. It's noticeably faster in every way, general browsing through to downloads, it probably hits around 95% of my max speed (900Mb down/110Mb up) whereas even the closest Nord servers would cap at about 70%.

It's more expensive but I like the option of using a number account and BTC payments.
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Not surprised about Mullvad, I've heard good things about them from many people.

I enquired with Nord the other week after I saw radically different speeds over Wireguard to different Nord servers - servers hosted by UKServers being orders of magnitude faster when tested. After some discussion about server loads, the algorithm their app uses to choose the 'best' server when connecting and so on, eventually they confirmed that "With NordLynx, 600Mbit [max] seems about right." (on a gigabit line).

So setting aside the fact Hyperoptic's routing is not exactly VIP premium, if you had the best underlying connection in the world it seems 600-700 Mbit/sec is a fair expectation on Nord. I can only presume they soft cap or their implementation isn't tuned for ultrafast lines. Still, if you can find a server which works well for you, speeds aren't slow. I was testing with 1901-1903 which at the time were hosted at UKServers.
 
~cw said:
Not surprised about Mullvad, I've heard good things about them from many people.
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Mullvad are indeed excellent.

I enquired with Nord the other week after I saw radically different speeds over Wireguard to different Nord servers - servers hosted by UKServers being orders of magnitude faster when tested. After some discussion about server loads, the algorithm their app uses to choose the 'best' server when connecting and so on, eventually they confirmed that "With NordLynx, 600Mbit [max] seems about right." (on a gigabit line).

So setting aside the fact Hyperoptic's routing is not exactly VIP premium, if you had the best underlying connection in the world it seems 600-700 Mbit/sec is a fair expectation on Nord. I can only presume they soft cap or their implementation isn't tuned for ultrafast lines. Still, if you can find a server which works well for you, speeds aren't slow. I was testing with 1901-1903 which at the time were hosted at UKServers.
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There's no cap with Nord. Are you running on Windows? WireGuard/Nord are not very multithreaded on Windows, and Windows is crappy for higher end networking anyway. Try again on Linux, which has has WireGuard baked in on more recent kernels and is fully multithreaded. I took this speed test this afternoon on a UK Nord server (using speedtest.net's CLI testing tool, on Linux):

nordvpn-gigabit-wireguard-threadripper-linux.png


As you can see, there's no cap.
 
Rainmaker said:
Mullvad are indeed excellent.



There's no cap with Nord. Are you running on Windows? WireGuard/Nord are not very multithreaded on Windows, and Windows is crappy for higher end networking anyway. Try again on Linux, which has has WireGuard baked in on more recent kernels and is fully multithreaded. I took this speed test this afternoon on a UK Nord server (using speedtest.net's CLI testing tool, on Linux):

nordvpn-gigabit-wireguard-threadripper-linux.png


As you can see, there's no cap.
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:O That's a good shout, I assumed they meant global cap. Nice speeds! I'm very aware of how suck Windows' TCP stack is, but I've not tested NordLynx in Linux. (ironically i.ibb.co timed out for me until the fifth reload...)
 
Rainmaker said:
There's no cap with Nord. Are you running on Windows? WireGuard/Nord are not very multithreaded on Windows, and Windows is crappy for higher end networking anyway. Try again on Linux, which has has WireGuard baked in on more recent kernels and is fully multithreaded. I took this speed test this afternoon on a UK Nord server (using speedtest.net's CLI testing tool, on Linux):
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Must just be a windows issue then, even using the closest UK server on Nord, I can't get more than 70% of my full connection speed.

I'm happy to pay a little more to mullvad with more anonymity on account details and BTC payments to get my full connection speed even on 'close' foreign servers.
 
Hey all, never used a VPN myself (use one just to connect to work PC but that through an IT company). I just want something I can watch Netflix etc through tbh. Not worried by anything else. Nord or Surfshark alright for this and easy for setup?

Surfshark claim 15 libraries compared to 7 for Nord. Does this really matter and actually accurate? It is like £45 for two years with SS and £68 for Nord
 
Curlyriff said:
Hey all, never used a VPN myself (use one just to connect to work PC but that through an IT company). I just want something I can watch Netflix etc through tbh. Not worried by anything else. Nord or Surfshark alright for this and easy for setup?

Surfshark claim 15 libraries compared to 7 for Nord. Does this really matter and actually accurate? It is like £45 for two years with SS and £68 for Nord
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Have you read any of the posts above yours? For example the one that mentions Nord is available with 100% cash back making it in effect free for 27 months?
 
Anyone know enough about Raspberry Pi, and OpenVpn to know how to get the best speeds out of them?
I am struggling to get even half of my connection speed through my VPN, i even tried a free trial of another company and it suffers the same problem.
Using the app on my phone doesn't result in far greater speeds though tbh, so i'm wondering if there is some port forward or similar that would help.

My VPN app has an option for Ikev2 and those speeds are blisteringly fast, I may look into seeing if I can create a VPN hotspot using that, although any tutorials looks dauntingly hard.
 
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ChroniC said:
Anyone know enough about Raspberry Pi, and OpenVpn to know how to get the best speeds out of them?
I am struggling to get even half of my connection speed through my VPN, i even tried a free trial of another company and it suffers the same problem.
Using the app on my phone doesn't result in far greater speeds though tbh, so i'm wondering if there is some port forward or similar that would help.

My VPN app has an option for Ikev2 and those speeds are blisteringly fast, I may look into seeing if I can create a VPN hotspot using that, although any tutorials looks dauntingly hard.
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Would really help if you told us which Pi and how fast the connection is and what sort of speeds you need? Pi’s are not great at OpenVPN as it’s a single threaded process, Pi’s earlier than the 3B+ really struggled due to the networking bus sharing bandwidth with the USB bus, the 3B+ fixed that and the 4 made things a lot better in terms of CPU/Networking, but you’ll still be limited to 100Mbit or so OpenVPN. If you want near gigabit speed, have you considered a provider who supports wireguard? Also is speed really the issue? A lot of the time people think it is, but realistically a 4Mbit stream is 4Mbit even if you have a gigabit WAN connection, stability and using an end point that’s low latency and not over subscribed tends to be more useful.

IkeV2 is not considered secure and hasn’t been for a long time. Depending on the reason for using a VPN this may or may not be an issue for you.
 
ic1male said:
After reading some posts, I plumped for Mullvad. I like how you can pay-as-you-go so I only went for a one-time payment of €5 to begin with. Let's see how we get on.
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How are you getting on with this? I'm more than happy with speeds i've seen and think it's worth the extra over the likes of Nord to be able to max my speeds.
 
SixTwoSix said:
How are you getting on with this? I'm more than happy with speeds i've seen and think it's worth the extra over the likes of Nord to be able to max my speeds.
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I've never gotten less than ~900Mbps on Mullvad, on any UK server I've tried. Nord is just as fast, but I wouldn't say it was faster. That's using WireGuard in all cases. Did you use something else? Just curious. I cancelled my Nord sub and got a refund. If the 100% cashback offer is still running I'll snag it (because why not?), but otherwise no biggie. I'm waiting for Proton to bring out WireGuard support, as that completes my wish list (secure, trusted company, WireGuard, Swiss location, Netflix/iPlayer/Amazon etc supported, 10 gig servers etc)... but I won't hold my breath.
 
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