How Much Upload Speed Needed To Run My Own Vpn

People are (rightfully) freaking out about their privacy as the Senate voted to allow cyberspace providers share your private information with advertisers. While it's important to protect your privacy, it doesn't mean that you should sign upward to a VPN service and tunnel all your internet traffic through VPN servers.

A VPN doesn't make y'all anonymous

What the hell is a VPN? I already wrote an article explaining VPNs using simple concepts, even comparing VPNs to movie automobile chases.

Only if you lot desire a brief recap, when you connect your reckoner or phone to a VPN server, you found an encrypted tunnel between your device and that server. Nobody tin see what's happening in the middle of this tunnel, not fifty-fifty your ISP.

And yet, it doesn't make yous magically anonymous. Y'all're just moving the risk downwardly the VPN tunnel as the VPN company can see all your internet traffic. In fact, many of them sell your information to scammers and advertisers already.

That's why I don't recommend signing upwards to a VPN service. You lot tin can't trust them.

Every bit a side note, many sites now rely on HTTPS to establish a secure connection between your browser and the website yous're using, fifty-fifty TechCrunch. Yous should install the HTTPS everywhere extension to make sure that you use HTTPS as much as possible.

But VPNs tin can be useful from time to time. Sometimes you can't access a website from a public network because it's blocked. Or y'all could be traveling to Mainland china and you want to be able to access your Gmail account. In those cases, it's all near minimizing the hazard while yous utilize a VPN.

Setting up your own VPN server

As Woz commented on my previous VPN commodity before the Senate debacle, you could be running your own VPN server:

But if y'all can't trust your dwelling house connection or yous have a slow upload speed on your dwelling house connection, information technology's not really practical.

I played around with Algo VPN, a set of scripts that let yous set up a VPN in the cloud in very piddling time, fifty-fifty if you lot don't know much nigh development. I've got to say that I was quite impressed with Trail of Bits' approach.

I created VPN servers on a DigitalOcean server, an Amazon Web Services instance and a Scaleway server. I could connect to all these VPNs from my Mac and iPhone merely a couple of minutes after that.

Algo VPN automates the VPN installation process then that you don't take to found an SSH connectedness with a server and run complicated command lines.

It takes three command lines to install the dependencies on your computer. After that, you should sign up to a cloud provider like DigitalOcean and run the Algo VPN setup wizard in your terminal. I'm non going to detail the installation process every bit it tin can change after I publish this mail service, but everything is explained on the official GitHub repository.

On DigitalOcean, yous don't have to create and configure your own server. Algo VPN takes care of that for you as it uses DigitalOcean's API to create a server and install everything.

At the end of the setup wizard, you lot'll get a few files on your local hard drive. For instance, on macOS, double-clicking on the configuration profile will add the VPN server to your network settings and connect y'all to your VPN server. You don't need to install a VPN client, it works natively on macOS and iOS.

So here's a quick recap:

Create an business relationship on a cloud hosting provider like DigitalOcean
Download Algo VPN on your local computer, unzip it
Install the dependencies with the command lines on this page
Run the installation sorcerer
Double click on the configuration profiles in the configs directory

Dispensable VPNs

Running your own VPN server doesn't mean that you'll be more than secure on the cyberspace, either. Once more, you lot're moving the adventure down the tunnel to the deject hosting provider.

If y'all employ Algo VPN on a Microsoft Azure case, the NSA could all the same enquire Microsoft more information well-nigh y'all if they think you're an evil person. Microsoft has your billing data.

But there'due south something refreshing virtually Algo VPN — it lets yous set disposable VPNs. You lot can boot up a new VPN server and connect to this VPN in just a few minutes. Once y'all're washed, you can but delete your instance and pretend that this VPN server never existed.

It'south much cheaper than subscribing to a VPN service, as yous can await to pay around $0.006 per 60 minutes of usage, or even less with free credit. And you lot'll get much amend performance as you won't share your VPN server with other VPN users. I got astonishing networking performances from my AWS VPN server for example:

While Algo VPN makes it easier to set upward a VPN server on DigitalOcean, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, I also tried using it with Scaleway to come across if you could employ it on whatsoever hosting provider. And information technology worked perfectly fine on the smallest Ubuntu deject server.

If you have a bit of technical cognition, I don't see any reason why you should sign up to a commercial VPN service after playing with Algo VPN. I trust myself for not handing over my data to authorities (duh). I don't necessarily trust the Amazons and Googles of the globe to fight for my privacy, only I know they won't sell my hosting information to third-political party advertisers and scammers. I'm not then confident well-nigh my personal data on their consumer services, only that'south a topic for another commodity.