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Setting up a VPN on vps or purchasing straight VPN service?

S

SammichPG

Member
Title says all.

I'm moving to college dorm and I'd rather not have my traffic monitored/inspected (besides they block many urls and let's not even talk about ports).

I'm not a very experienced sysadmin (and IT is not my field of studies), but I can read tutorials and enjoy setting up computers.

Price wise VPS is cheaper and I could use it for neat stuff like accessing files stored on my home server and running ownclowd instead of relying on google for calendar/contact sync.

I'm not looking for torrenting or other illegal stuff, I just want to mantain privacy and not have someone decide which websites I can or can't visit.



TLDR is setting up a single user vpn an impractical task for a hobbyist?
 
SammichPG said:
Title says all.

I'm moving to college dorm and I'd rather not have my traffic monitored/inspected (besides they block many urls and let's not even talk about ports).

I'm not a very experienced sysadmin (and IT is not my field of studies), but I can read tutorials and enjoy setting up computers.

Price wise VPS is cheaper and I could use it for neat stuff like accessing files stored on my home server and running ownclowd instead of relying on google for calendar/contact sync.

I'm not looking for torrenting or other illegal stuff, I just want to mantain privacy and not have someone decide which websites I can or can't visit.



TLDR is setting up a single user vpn an impractical task for a hobbyist?
Click to expand...

Bolded part is relevant. If you're concerned about security/anonymity, pay somebody to do the job right.

It's probably be cheaper than leasing a VPS, too.

It's not that a hobbyist _can't_ do it - or even do a good job of it - it's just risk management.
 
me and my buddies use a vpn service which costs only about $10 a month for when we are deployed, the military tries to limit our access and thats an easy work around - should probably work for a college dorm as well.
 
Thanks for the offers, but I decided to go with the vps route. Worst case scenario I'll have wasted less than 6-7€ and learned a new thing or two.
 
RossMAN said:
Or you could pay $2.50 per month (with 24 month commitment).
Click to expand...

I wonder how these companies can afford to offer the service for so cheap. A typical server rental cost's about $100/mo, even colo cost's about that much. Most providers also don't provide unlimited bandwidth, and since most people will pipe their whole internet through the VPN not only does it have to be fast but it needs to have enough bandwidth so that the owner does not hit the overusage fees.

Been toying myself with the idea of a VPN as with bill C-51 we arn't any better here in Canada than in the states anymore when it comes to mass surveillance.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I wonder how these companies can afford to offer the service for so cheap. A typical server rental cost's about $100/mo, even colo cost's about that much. Most providers also don't provide unlimited bandwidth, and since most people will pipe their whole internet through the VPN not only does it have to be fast but it needs to have enough bandwidth so that the owner does not hit the overusage fees.

Been toying myself with the idea of a VPN as with bill C-51 we arn't any better here in Canada than in the states anymore when it comes to mass surveillance.
Click to expand...

You don't necessarily have to pipe your whole internet through the VPN. You could for example have your main PC with an on/off switch for VPN and have a NAS/always on PC which only routes certain (or all) traffic through a VPN. This is pretty straightforward to accomplish using Linux and OpenVPN.

You could even have certain programs not run if the VPN connection is not there. For example torrent programs. There are many examples online of people doing this.
 
It's probably not a good idea to roll your own VPN installation if you aren't a it professional. I was using ipvanish for the past few months (around $10 bucks a month) and recently made the switch to frostvpn ($3 month) and it works for my purposes.

Maybe try a few of the budget VPN providers for under $5 a month before setting up your own server?
 
I have my own VPS for VPN. I use it when I'm connected to public networks, passing all traffic through it including DNS.
 
I rent my own VPS for $2.50 a month that's out of the country that does VPN for me. Adds a bit of latency but totally worth the security. I use it for other things of course to it's an added bonus to bounce packets off of it!
 
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