Diy Proxy Server vs VPN Server

[Julius217]

I'm looking to create my own Proxy Server or VPN Server. I did a little research and determined the main difference is that a VPN offers encyption whereas a proxy server does not. One of my friends was talking about using a raspberry pi to make his proxy server. Would I be able to use a pi for a VPN Server? If so, what are some recommendations.  I've never used a pi before, but I am familiar with Arduino. 

[WereCatf]

8 minutes ago, Julius217 said:

Would I be able to use a pi for a VPN Server? If so, what are some recommendations.  I've never used a pi before, but I am familiar with Arduino. 

Yes, you would, though I'd recommend going for the newer RPi4 instead of the older ones simply because running a VPN is a reasonably heavy task due to all the encryption-stuff needed. Also, Arduino is nothing like a Pi as the Pi simply runs a full-blown Linux.

 

As for the software: OpenVPN is what you want. It's not particularly easy to set up for a newbie, but you'd probably find plenty of guides for setting up OpenVPN on an RPi if you bother to google for it or search on Youtube.

 

That said, you can run OpenVPN on a billion different devices as well, so if you've got some old laptop lying around being useless or something, you could whip up Linux on it and run OpenVPN there, instead of buying an RPi for it. Or, hell, if you decided to get a new router, you could look for one that is supported by OpenWRT (OpenWRT is a custom Linux OS for routers) and install OpenVPN on it, or setup Pfsense on something and setup OpenVPN on it -- you have plenty of options, so choose whichever tickles your fancy! (Me, I have a Pfsense-router handling my network and I've got OpenVPN running on it as well -- both in TUN-mode and TAP-mode, for different needs. It's fricking great stuff and I've come to really love Pfsense.)

[nick name]

Most folks run either to mask their IP.  How do you intend to mask your IP if you're running the device off your own internet?  Or will you be finding some place else to install your device?

[WereCatf]

11 minutes ago, nick name said:

Most folks run either to mask their IP.  How do you intend to mask your IP if you're running the device off your own internet?  Or will you be finding some place else to install your device?

There are plenty other reasons to run VPN as well, like e.g. if you often use a network you don't trust, you could instead route all your traffic to your home-network. Another one could be accessing services on your home-network that you don't wish to expose to the Internet directly.

[Julius217]

I plan to use it for when I'm on public wi-fi in general for a variety of different things, i.e. banking, connecting to game servers

[Olaf6541]

If you just do some browsing,writing emails etc then I would suggest to buy a router with vpn server built in (my Archer C1200 does about 8mbps on openvpn). If you need higher speeds I would advise to look into Apollo/Gemini lake SoC's (easily 100+ mbps on openvpn).

As for a Pi, I don't really know but I guess it would be somewhere in between. Did some quick searching and saw 30mbps on a forum so it may be enough for you. I'm only familiar with openvpn so maybe other vpn types would be even faster, I dunno.

[Julius217]

So far I've gathered from y'all, that I need a Linux OS and OpenVPN. Am I correct?

[Jarsky]

Generally the idea of running a VPN server at home is so you can remote in securely to access resources within your own network. 

If you just want a VPN for security or for gaming then a subscription service like NordVPN makes a lot of sense. 

 

[Julius217]

Subscribing to a VPN would defeat the purpose of me building my own.

[2FA]

7 hours ago, Julius217 said:

I plan to use it for when I'm on public wi-fi in general for a variety of different things, i.e. banking, connecting to game servers

If that's the use case, then a VPN connected to your home network works fine whether it's router based or server based.

[jake9000]

What router do you have? There's a good chance it has a vpn server built in to it already. 

[Julius217]

3 hours ago, jake9000 said:

What router do you have? There's a good chance it has a vpn server built in to it already. 

One from my isp. Either way, will I need a static ip address from my isp?

[jake9000]

No, you can use a dynamic dns service such as no-ip. If you own your own domain, your registrar might offer that as well. Namecheap offers it for free if you have a domain with them. 

[Jarsky]

12 hours ago, Julius217 said:

Subscribing to a VPN would defeat the purpose of me building my own.

You never stated this was a requirement. Your requirement was you wanted a secure VPN for banking, and for connecting to game servers when on public connections. 

 

But in that case OpenVPN is easy to setup, plenty of guides for any Windows/Linux machine you might want to install it on. 

Also you need to make sure you have a standard connection with its own Dynamic/Fixed IP and not a shared one (CG-NAT). 

Some ISP's in some countries charge for Fixed IP's so if you dont have one of those, then you'll need something like Dyndns to maintain an up to date address you can connect to.