Private VPN service Recommendations
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Posted by SMS on April 17, 2008, 8:40 am
Please log in for more thread options to one that doesn't, because the savings are substantial. Since I often use Wi-Fi "out in the wild" I need to replace this VPN service with something. Has anyone used J-Wire's Hotspot Helper ("http://www.jiwire.com/hotspot-helper.htm") or HotSpot VPN ("http://www.hotspotvpn.com/"). J-Wire is $25/year, while HotSpot VPN is $88 per year. I'm not clear on the advantage, if any, of the more expensive service. | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Jeff Liebermann on April 17, 2008, 12:41 pm
Please log in for more thread options Sonic runs IPSec which is about as good as it gets. If you can live with PPTP or an SSL VPN, you can terminate the VPN with any commodity router that supports PPTP or SSL VPN's, or a Linux server, or even a Windoze 2000/2003 server. The catch is that the box or server has to be sitting on a fat pipe, which usually means sitting in the ISP's server farm. I roll my own which terminates at a friends router that's sitting in a server farm. It's fairly fast. I also have PPTP VPN terminations setup on my office and home routers. With DSL lines, it's *REALLY* slow. I use these only for checking if I have any email or testing. There are some other VPN terminations. See the FAQ: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi#VPN_Service_Providers>
One that looks interesting is iPig: <http://www.iopus.com/iPig/>
which offers a free VPN server (iPig Server Express Edition):
<http://www.iopus.com/iPig/download/>
I haven't tried it, but if you have a Windoze box running somewhere,
it might be an easy solution. -- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Bill Kearney on April 17, 2008, 12:47 pm
Please log in for more thread options > I also have PPTP VPN terminations
> setup on my office and home routers. With DSL lines, it's *REALLY* > slow. I use these only for checking if I have any email or testing. I've had VPN's setup at home for quite a while. I would not call it "really slow". It's as fast as your uplink speed. I've had a 1.5/512 connection for a while and it's certainly faster than a 768/128. One other alternative to VPN is to use a remote desktop session. This way you connect to your home PC as a video client. RDP takes about 20k per session, more than usable over a 128k link. You can't watch full motion video through it but it's good for nearly everything else. If you don't want to use RDP you could use VNC instead. There's lots of ways to make it work. The single biggest hassle to using your own home connection is the dynamic IP address. Sign up for a dynamic DNS service and set it up on your router. I'll work well enough most of the time. -Bill Kearney | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by Jeff Liebermann on April 17, 2008, 1:57 pm
Please log in for more thread options On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:47:55 -0400, "Bill Kearney"
>> I also have PPTP VPN terminations
>> setup on my office and home routers. With DSL lines, it's *REALLY* >> slow. I use these only for checking if I have any email or testing. >
>I've had VPN's setup at home for quite a while. I would not call it "really >slow". It's as fast as your uplink speed. I've had a 1.5/512 connection >for a while and it's certainly faster than a 768/128. I'm on 3.0/256 in the office and 1.5/256 at home. Those speeds work fine for everything except the automagic updates that Microsloth and every other vendor insists on dumping on one's machine without asking. I have to turn off all that stuff on my laptop in order to use my laptop effectively through a slow connection. If I don't use my laptop for perhaps a week, I'm guaranteed a few megabloats of downloads before I can start using the laptop. Meanwhile, I've been experimenting with splitting the traffic on the laptop. The email traffic goes to my home router VPN which I treat as a proxy server. Everything else goes through the gateway on the coffee shop wireless router. I haven't been in one place with my laptop long enough to set it up correctly, or be sure it's working, but it seems like a reasonable compromise. >One other alternative to VPN is to use a remote desktop session. This way
>you connect to your home PC as a video client. RDP takes about 20k per >session, more than usable over a 128k link. You can't watch full motion >video through it but it's good for nearly everything else. If you don't >want to use RDP you could use VNC instead. There's lots of ways to make it >work. I use RealVNC extensively. Works well but is slow. So is MS Remote Desktop, GoToMyPC, and PC Anywhere. What's odd is that they are slow at different things. Each one seems to optimize some part of the puzzle, at the expense of others. Weird. >The single biggest hassle to using your own home connection is the dynamic
>IP address. Sign up for a dynamic DNS service and set it up on your router. >I'll work well enough most of the time. I've been using DynDNS for years. I think I'm up to about 30 machines. No problems except compatibility issues with broken built in DynDNS clients found in some routers. <http://www.dyndns.com/support/clients/hardware/>
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558 | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted by msg on April 18, 2008, 11:07 am
Please log in for more thread options Bill Kearney wrote:
>> I also have PPTP VPN terminations
>> setup on my office and home routers. With DSL lines, it's *REALLY* >> slow. I use these only for checking if I have any email or testing. >
> > I've had VPN's setup at home for quite a while. I would not call it > "really slow". It's as fast as your uplink speed. I've had a 1.5/512 > connection for a while and it's certainly faster than a 768/128. > > One other alternative to VPN is to use a remote desktop session. This > way you connect to your home PC as a video client. RDP takes about 20k > per session, more than usable over a 128k link. You can't watch full > motion video through it but it's good for nearly everything else. <snip>
Agreed. RDP is a great solution and if you use 'rdesktop' (be sure to follow the development threads regarding security and other issues), you don't need to buy TSCALs. Full motion video ain't so intolerable on faster links too. > The single biggest hassle to using your own home connection is the
> dynamic IP address. Sign up for a dynamic DNS service and set it up on > your router. I'll work well enough most of the time. Lots of independent ISPs will give you a /30 for real cheap -- a better solution than dynamic DNS. Michael | ||||||||||||||||
>to one that doesn't, because the savings are substantial.
>
>Since I often use Wi-Fi "out in the wild" I need to replace this VPN
>service with something.
>
>Has anyone used J-Wire's Hotspot Helper
>("http://www.jiwire.com/hotspot-helper.htm") or HotSpot VPN
>("http://www.hotspotvpn.com/").
>
>J-Wire is $25/year, while HotSpot VPN is $88 per year. I'm not clear on
>the advantage, if any, of the more expensive service.