Re: Personal VPN service
Reply #1 –
I could write a book about VPN problems... mostly revolving around stupid/ignorant/incompetent systems administrators running Internet Service Providers (ISPs). And it's by no means limited to the smaller ISPs either.
OpenVPN is, in my own professional opinion, the best choice. It's by far the most stable VPN system we have used although it can be somewhat puzzling to configure. OpenVPN offers several configurations, however, including a simple shared-password setup. So if they're offering that, then it's a big plus.
The downside to a VPN is that systems administrators can block them pretty easily. One provider, which blankets much of the PNW in rural communities, has an administrator who insists that he can put servers up with IP addresses like 192.168.1.1 on our WAN because it's *his* LAN. This required us to re-configure the LAN in the headquarters of a client that had VPNs to 5 locations spread over 200 miles.
We have also discovered that administrators block port 500 which is used for VPNs; mostly out of ignorance that their customers may be using that port for legitimate business purposes. Or they could block any other port they consider "suspicious".
Then, of course, you could find that some admin type might simply decide that the VPN provider you connect to is suspect and block any access to that.
The use of a VPN can keep your network connections private and stop some "man in the middle" from snooping your passwords; but SSL does that too and any web site with the prefix "https" is using that. This would include your bank, credit union, and usually shopping sites where you'd use a credit card.
The biggest downside to using a "personal" VPN is that, at some point, your packets have to go out on the Internet in a normal fashion; in this case, from the provider of the personal VPN service. So you only have a VPN between your computer and this provider; everything from there on is either "in the clear" or over an encrypted connection you could do at your own computer just as easily.
But a VPN between your laptop and your office or home network would be a good idea, in my opinion. You could be using your own server - set up at your home or office location - as a VPN server and then connect to your file server with confidence that no one is snooping. This would be a good way to do business email, strategy planning, etc. But it would only be useful for internal use. It would be your own "cloud". Linux is especially good for such purposes. But any connection to outside sites like Amazon or your bank would still go outside the LAN and therefore be out on the Internet with everything that implies.
Craig
Topic: Personal VPN service