VPN and port forwarding (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I am looking to buy a VPN subscription, and im interested in getting one that allows port forwarding. Found a few that still allows this, including pure VPN and air VPN which seem to offer good value for money, at least on the the long term plans. Any feedback on these two?

I used to have nordvpn, and used it for 3 years, and once that subscription ran out, have been using mullvad so far. Performance wise mullvad hasnt disappointed me or anything, but now im looking to find one that allows port forwarding.

I also have a doubt regarding the whole port forwarding thing, does the VPN having this feature enable to do it even if my ISP doesnt allow port forwarding? From the videos and articles I read, VPN port forwarding is just something you do inside their native apps and such, so if the ISP hasnt enabled port forwarding for me (which I know it hasnt, because tried to get jellyfin working the other day, and couldnt get the ports to open even after setting everything up in my router), will I still be able to do it? I tried searching around with this query, but didnt really find anything.

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[-] rhythmicotter@midwest.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I use AirVPN. It's reliable and I like their vpn client Eddie, but there are a few things you should know. Google blocks traffic from all of their Dallas servers, about 20% of their us based servers. Also, a few web hosting companies block AirVPN traffic, at least on the servers I use, including GoDaddy. I can't access the Linux Mint forums while on AirVPN either. Every day or two I have to disable the VPN to access a site, which defeats the purpose, IMO.

One good thing about AirVPN is that they have sales often. But I would try a week now before committing. Reliability has been top notch and they have a lot of servers.

Edit: I use port forwarding for bittorrent and it was easy to set up. You log in on their website and choose a port to forward for your account. I'm honestly a novice at networking and I figured it out using these instructions.

[-] svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the additional information, I am not in the US, and would not most likely be using their US servers. Web hosting services blocking the traffic seems concerning though, isnt GoDaddy one of the big player?

[-] Nitrate55@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I switched to AirVPN a month ago and haven't encountered a single site blocking me from connecting with my VPN so far. I looked up GoDaddy and connected with the VPN on and it didn't block me from going on the site. I connected with servers in Canada and the US. GoDaddy appears to be a site that sells domains, so even if they blocked people connecting to their site, I doubt they could force anyone who buys a domain from them to block VPN connections as well. And if they really are one of bigger domain retailers on the internet, I'm sure I would've encountered a site registered with them by now that's blocking me from connecting.

Other than that, my experience with the VPN has been good so far. Page load times are good, port forwarding works, and download speeds reach the max for my internet plan. They appear to have a good privacy track record as well. I'd recommend it.

[-] rhythmicotter@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Maybe I just go to different sites than you, but I run into problems accessing web sites from AirVPN fairly often. Its also possible that the AirVPN servers that you use are not blocked like they are for mine (Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, etc).

Like I said above, the best thing is to try any VPN service for a few days or a week to see whether anything annoying happens in your use case before jumping into a long term contract.

[-] Nitrate55@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

the best thing is to try any VPN service for a few days or a week to see whether anything annoying happens in your use case before jumping into a long term contract.

Agreed, that's actually what I did with AirVPN myself before switching to it. Got their 3 day plan and used it the whole way through until I knew the service would work for me. It's too bad not every service offers short plans this way. Fortunately, a lot of them do have 30 day refund policies, so you can just get any plan then cancel and request a refund before the 30 days are out.

Its also possible that the AirVPN servers that you use are not blocked like they are for mine

I think that might be the issue. I almost always connect through Canada servers, since those are always the fastest servers for torrenting and browsing when I sort the servers on the interface by latency vs torrent speeds. I do sometimes connect through their New York servers though, and haven't really noticed any blocking when I do. Maybe they only block some US servers and not others, or I just don't connect through the New York servers often enough to notice any blocking.

[-] rhythmicotter@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, GoDaddy is a very popular hosting company. I would do a short trial on any VPN before committing to a longer contract. It is possible that the sites you visit won't block your geographically local airvpn servers. Web hosting companies treat different servers from the same VPN differently.