Help With A VPN
 

I follow several technology channels on YouTube and they all seem to heavily recommend using a VPN. I installed NordVPN as it was one of the recommended programs. But my internet connections seems to run a lot slower. Microsoft Outlook also seems to be having issues with it. It wants me to enter my password every time I open it now. Is there any way to resolve these issues or it is just the nature of a VPN?

A VPN or any other alternative is going to slow your connection speed unless it's a good VPN service. A great VPN will require the provider of the VPN to have both great download and upload speeds. Free VPNs don't have the resources and are constantly overcrowded. Frankly there are virtually no free VPN providers that will offer decent speeds and - what I suspect you are seeking - anonymity.

I wouldn't insert a middleman into my connection. In most cases, you'll just displace your data. Rather than being checked locally via your actual IP, it will probably be subject to surveillance in whatever location the VPN server is located.

I don't see a reason why the average internet user would need to systematically use VPNs. I use a VPN merely to circumvent location-based availability of data and secure networks.

You could try Tunnelbear. You get 500Mb per month. After that you'll have to pay. CyberGhostVPN does work good as well. Both never disappointed in terms of speed. The free VPN offered by Opera browser can be slow at times.

I paid $79 for a two year subscription to NordVPN. PC Magazine rated it as the fastest so that's why I went with it. I connect to a lot of different wifi networks in hotels and airports. I'm not sure how secure they are and I don't want any of my personal information being exposed. I really don't like entering my banking or credit card information on them and usually used my phone's LTE network instead.

If you're concerned about security, you might consider setting up your own home VPN. Many routers support VPN, and you can also flash most routers with dd-wrt, which has an excellent VPN implementation. I've been doing this for years and it has worked perfectly.

Do you have a multi-platform IPSec client? I've been trying to find a VPN appliance I can install at home and connect to using both my iPhone and Windows 10 laptop.

You don't need the same IPSec client, just an IPSec client for whatever platform you're using. I use Windows 10's built-in VPN client on laptop and office computers. On my Android phone and tablet, I use Android's built-in VPN client. I don't have any Apple products, but it's hard to believe there isn't IPSec VPN capability available. I haven't had to use a separate client for years.

In addition to the IPSec VPN, dd-wrt also support OpenVPN in both server and client mode. I've never fooled around with OpenVPN, but I'm pretty sure it's available for anything and everything.

Some of the consumer products I have used for hardware VPN have required vendor specific software to use it. In those cases, often times at least one of my platforms was not supported despite my best efforts. Native IPSec clients simply would not authenticate. This was a long time ago though, maybe it's different now.

NordVPN was awful for me, so after one year I switched over to PureVPN. Much, much faster, more intuitive interface, and far fewer connect glitches.

A VPN is basically only needed if you are in a situation where you don't trust your internet connection--either because it's being tampered with, spied upon or because you're doing something you don't want the authorities to know about.

It's unlikely your home connection is being tampered with in any important fashion. Some ISPs these days will inject notification messages into unencrypted HTML traffic but that's usually about it. Public Wi-Fi is another matter, a black hat is much more likely. In foreign lands it can be essential--for example, nothing Google works in China. I don't set foot over there without having a VPN set up on my equipment.

Spied upon is usually not a meaningful threat to the average person. If I'm over there and not using a VPN I figure Beijing can probably see what I'm doing. So what? Things like login credentials go over HTTPS already, they won't get the passwords. These days many systems have gone 100% HTTPS anyway, they're not going to see what you're doing.

That leaves hiding from the authorities. If they're going to deploy the big guns to hunt you it's not going to be enough. The government will trace you to the VPN, then go tell the VPN to disclose what IP such-and-such traffic is coming from. VPNs that advertise about not keeping records will protect you from this in the past but it won't shield you if you're actively doing it when they are hunting. (They see you browsing at PlayPen, every VPN out there will cough up the account info {which could be anonymous} and source IP {which will finger you.}) It's only a useful shield against low level things--copyright issues etc.

I have yet to see a VPN that doesn't seriously trash your speed--admittedly, my first criteria is how well they play cat & mouse with the Great Firewall, though.

Edit: Forgot, there's one more use case that's rare: If you need to be able to accept inbound connections and your ISP is doing address translation. (Note, however, that this is almost certainly against the TOS of your ISP!) I have a 10.x.x.x address here, inbound connections simply aren't going to happen. This is normally worked around these days by both ends connecting to a central server that then sends out packets that will trick both systems into thinking it's outbound traffic and allowing the connection to be built so there's little reason to use a VPN for such a case. (I'm thinking of things like Skype, TeamViewer etc.)

I want to add a VPN appliance to my home network so that I can tunnel in while on the road. I have some file servers etc. on my LAN that would be useful to access securely. I'm not comfortable opening these up to the WAN with FTP or the like.

Plus I've been considering getting PS Vue. It has some restrictions about needing to be on your home network both periodically and to access RSNs.

I echo Loren Pechtel's comments. If you're concerned about data security on public wifi, then virtually anything important will be sent over https anyway and thus can't be viewed by third parties in transit. I just noticed that even FlyerTalk now runs over https.

The main reason for using a VPN therefore becomes being able to access location-restricted services. Anonymity is also a factor, but using a VPN just shifts the responsibility for maintaining your anonymity to the VPN provider. If you want anonymity, use Tor and access it from a public wifi network.

Speeds on a VPN will also usually be slower than via direct connection unless the VPN provider has a lot of bandwidth. That kind of bandwidth is expensive for service providers to contract for, so if you're not paying a lot you probably won't get it. Better would be to set up a VPN server in Azure or AWS and use that.

As for the idea of a home VPN, it's an excellent idea that I use on occasion if I am on public wifi or (mostly) for accessing things in my house. iOS does include a built-in IPSec client, and I've downloaded the official OpenVPN client app. My home router (an EdgeRouter X SFP) includes IPSec, OpenVPN, and PPTP VPN servers. If you're hobbyist-minded, then you can see about flashing Tomato, DD-WRT, or OpenWRT onto a consumer router, all of which include VPN options. Or you can build a router using pfSense.

I don't have any non-computer, non-phone products connected via my VPN. I have a Grandstream Phone that supports OpenVPN, but I haven't needed to connect it to my router (yet), and I haven't configured the router for OpenVPN. dd-wrt will support both OpenVPN and IPSec VPN at the same time.

That's exactly what I use VPN for (along with VNC). I strongly suggest you look at dd-wrt. The odds are your existing router can be flashed with dd-wrt, the process is easy, and configuration is straight forward. Best of all, dd-wrt is free.

I'd heard DD-WRT was essentially a dead project. Just checked their website and there haven't been updates in a year...that sort of thing is why I switched to the Ubiquiti world. It's nice having an actual company put out nice hardware that is officially supported and has software updates.

Ubiquiti is new name for me. I'll check it out. I've been using dd-wrt for years because it simply works and works well. Right now, I have no reason to change, but I will check out Ubiquiti.