Questions about VPN's

mjKneafsey · September 8, 2013

Hi. I haven't really used this forum for a while, but I now have some questions about VPN and was hoping you would be able to help me.

1. From what I have read I seem to understand that VPN's "hide" your internet usage from your ISP, so would this mean it hides all traffic even stuff like P2P traffic?

2. Would hiding traffic also mean that it could be used to get past any fair use data limits?

3. While I would mainly use it on my pc, could I use my pc as a sort of tethering point for my xbox 360? Alternatively I heard that using a DDWRT enabled router would allow me to use multiple devices on the VPN at once

4. How do I know that a VPN is something I would need?

If I think of anymore I'll let you guys know.

Thanks.

tom564 · September 8, 2013

Hi. I haven't really used this forum for a while, but I now have some questions about VPN and was hoping you would be able to help me.

1. From what I have read I seem to understand that VPN's "hide" your internet usage from your ISP, so would this mean it hides all traffic even stuff like P2P traffic?

2. Would hiding traffic also mean that it could be used to get past any fair use data limits?

3. While I would mainly use it on my pc, could I use my pc as a sort of tethering point for my xbox 360? Alternatively I heard that using a DDWRT enabled router would allow me to use multiple devices on the VPN at once

4. How do I know that a VPN is something I would need?

If I think of anymore I'll let you guys know.

Thanks.

1. Your ISP will not be able to see what the traffic is but they can see that there is traffic

2. Maybe but only if the FUP is related to a specific traffic.

3. You should be able to plug your xbox into the Ethernet port on your PC and share the internet connection, however i do not see a benefit to this.

4. Not sure

rufee · September 8, 2013

You can only hide the content from your ISP as VPN packets are encrypted, you can't hide the amount or the rate of data that you are using, so if you are downloading at 1mbps through a VPN you are also downloading at 1mbps.

VPN's are used to "change" your IP to get past region blocks or p2p blocks etc...

You can do site to site VPN with dd-wrt yes. You would mainly use it to get past blocks for p2p or netflix for example, usually i would use a VPN for getting in my home network to control my devices so its for you to decide if you need it.

LAwLz · September 8, 2013

1. From what I have read I seem to understand that VPN's "hide" your internet usage from your ISP, so would this mean it hides all traffic even stuff like P2P traffic?

2. Would hiding traffic also mean that it could be used to get past any fair use data limits?

It hides the traffic from your ISP but not how much or how fast you use it. So if you did send/recieve files through P2P such as torrents, then your ISP would not be able to see that (but the one who owns the VPN would, and the VPN's ISP would see it as well). You can not get around bandwidth caps by using VPN. Think of it this way, when you send a text saying "hello world", your ISP can see that. With a VPN, your ISP would see "x5c11f0a32ld" instead. They can still see that you sent the message and how big it was, but not what was in it. The VPN provider will then decrypt the "x5c11f0a32ld" into "hello world" again.

3. While I would mainly use it on my pc, could I use my pc as a sort of tethering point for my xbox 360? Alternatively I heard that using a DDWRT enabled router would allow me to use multiple devices on the VPN at once

Yes, DD-WRT allows you to send all your traffic from all devices through the VPN.

4. How do I know that a VPN is something I would need?

Well it depends what you want to do. Personally I am highly against renting VPNs unless you want to for example watch US Netflix. I got a VPN running on my home router though. I use it to download files from my NAS if I am at for example school. It also allows me to use things like Wake On LAN securely.

If you answer "yes" to any of these questions then you might want to consider getting a VPN:

1) Does your ISP try to censor content that is legal and you want to access?

2) Does your ISP throttle you a lot?

3) Do you want to access sites which puts restrictions on people from different countries (such as Hulu not working outside of the US, or iPlayer not working outside of the UK)?

4) Do you feel like you really need to hide your traffic from your ISP, and would rather trust some other company with all your data?

Please remember that VPNs cost money if you rent them so even if you answered yes to any of the questions above, it still might not be worth it.