This is by far the most useful information I have yet seen about VPNs, thank you very much for putting this together and sharing it!
I don’t really torrent much, but I don’t use VPN for torrenting, because that’s not my intended purpose. Using VPN to make sure I’m not being spied on by my government/ISP etc.
I’m running a handful of vpn instances on my digital ocean servers. mostly I do this because being an atheist in Pakistan, especially in my family is risky business. I’m also providing vpn services to some atheists from my city, for the purpose of protecting their skins. the main reason why I run my own servers is because I am way too paranoid to trust anyone else. I’d rather pay more and get better protection.
In the past, I’ve used PIA and Torguard. (I believe my brother is still using Torguard account I signed up for.) However I didn’t leave any of these two services for any security problems, just plain old paranoia.
I’m just using it for bypassing my school’s blocking rules.
I have OpenVPN running on my NAS so I can tunnel to it while on the road so I can protect myself from other people on the same Wifi as me. Some locations block services like TunnelBear (somehow I dunno) but OpenVPN always works for me.
Have you done any online gaming while using it via a close-by server (to minimize latency)?
They also sponsor Linux mint.
No PIA client for Fedora/RPM systems which is pretty lame. Only supports ubuntu.
Have you ever attempted any online gaming through it via a close-by server?
You use the app for their service or VIA the VPN in your network stack?
I accidentally play csgo with my PureVPN running and I’ve never noticed until shutdown. I have fiber, but with speed tests I’m consistently getting 100 megabytes down. No logs and I paid $50 for 2 years.
I’m happy with Pure on my wife’s W10 box but find it a hassle on my Mint lappy. Rather than a GUI with server dropdown, apparently I must create VPN connections for every single server I might want to use? Ugh.
Consumer equipment
Preach. I’ve been throwing out consumer equipment everywhere because having to spend hours with crazy undocumented consumer equipment is a pain in the arse and simply not worth it. Commodity SMB hardware doesn’t cost that much more anyway.
Also, yup, ipsec everywhere I can, openvpn where I can’t. Done directly at the gateway so nothing can sneak past.
if you have your own vps, I’d greatly recommend Softether. It’s incredibly feature rich. Has simple gui configuration, but this configuration tool runs only on windows though. You can always configure it using the cli tool.
If you want to mask your traffic you are better off using tor than paying for a VPN which leaves a money trail leading back to you.
I play most of my games through it. No noticeable lag at all.
I don’t play computer games, so I can’t speak to how well it works for gaming.