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 2 points 1 year ago

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.

Do you know what the ISP port forwarding status is, in your case, or is that irrelevant to setting it up?

[-] rhythmicotter@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't know really anything about network setup, but as far as I know, your ISP should have nothing to do with it while you use a VPN.

All I had to do was change the settings on the AirVPN account on their website (logged in) and add the port to my qbittorrent settings. This is unrelated, but I also added a killswitch in qbittorrent advanced settings that stops torrenting if my vpn connection fails. After that, I went to a site like https://canyouseeme.org/ and verified my port forwarding was set up properly.

I never had to touch my router or ISP settings. My configuration is running the VPN from each device. It is also possible to set up your VPN directly on the router. That way, all traffic on the home network is through the VPN.