VPN question

Hikaru12 · March 21, 2017

Suppose I have a apartment in one city that gets 25 Meg down and a house in another city that gets 200 Meg down. If I connect from the house that gets 25 Meg down to the 200 Meg one via VPN do I assume the 200 meg download speed or do I just get assigned IP as if I were local and my internet speeds are unaffected? I'm wondering this because I will be moving between two states quite frequently in the next few months and having to pay for two high speed internet connections would be costly.

VVoltor · March 21, 2017

No, you're still using you're ISPs connection, wherever you are.

So if you get 25mbit/s somewhere, you can connect through the fastest VPN in the world but you're still limited to 25mbit/s

TheNuzziNuzz · March 21, 2017

Maybe invest in a really good wireless plan?

Donut417 · March 21, 2017

11 hours ago, Hikaru12 said:

Suppose I have a apartment in one city that gets 25 Meg down and a house in another city that gets 200 Meg down. If I connect from the house that gets 25 Meg down to the 200 Meg one via VPN do I assume the 200 meg download speed or do I just get assigned IP as if I were local and my internet speeds are unaffected? I'm wondering this because I will be moving between two states quite frequently in the next few months and having to pay for two high speed internet connections would be costly.

All a VPN should do is create a secure encrypted tunnel between point A on the internet and point B on the internet. Theoretically the tunnel is secure and no one can see whats happening in the tunnel. You only get the speeds you pay for from your ISP. All connecting your two houses will do is have a secure link so you can share things across the internet with out any one knowing whats being shared and you ISP wont be able to throttle your traffic based on what type of traffic it is. For instance some ISPs might throttle Youtube, using a VPN would stop this because they would not be able to determine what type of traffic is in the tunnel.

paddy-stone · March 21, 2017

The only way to get faster internet at the new address will be to pay for a higher plan, if available of course. And actually if you connected house B to house As connection, you would get even less speed because of latency etc, when I'm on VPN it's usually around 3Mbit/s slower than max, so guessing you would actually get around 22Mbps max, and that's with a decent enough paid for VPN, so you might as well use the money for the VPN to get a higher plan at house B if possible.

paddy-stone · March 21, 2017

You could however connect to your PC at house A from house B and download whatever you wanted to house As computer/NAS and stream it to house B through the VPN. That's a very specific use case of course, but what I meant is of it was something you usually did at house A, you could still do it through a VPN or even just regular unattended teamviewer access or something. Then you can share/stream the content to house B (still at 22-25Mbps), and anything you didn't finish watching or whatever you could finish when you go to house A again... I hope that makes sense? I used to do that when I stayed at my bro's, he had terrible internet, so used to download all my stuff to my house by connecting to my house via teamviewer.. I had to set up wake from magic packet though, which can be awkward. But was much more liveable, yes I still couldn't do certain things at my bros, but it saved me time having to do all that stuff when I got home though anyway, so win win.

Hikaru12 · March 22, 2017

2 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

You could however connect to your PC at house A from house B and download whatever you wanted to house As computer/NAS and stream it to house B through the VPN. That's a very specific use case of course, but what I meant is of it was something you usually did at house A, you could still do it through a VPN or even just regular unattended teamviewer access or something. Then you can share/stream the content to house B (still at 22-25Mbps), and anything you didn't finish watching or whatever you could finish when you go to house A again... I hope that makes sense? I used to do that when I stayed at my bro's, he had terrible internet, so used to download all my stuff to my house by connecting to my house via teamviewer.. I had to set up wake from magic packet though, which can be awkward. But was much more liveable, yes I still couldn't do certain things at my bros, but it saved me time having to do all that stuff when I got home though anyway, so win win.

That's actually pretty clever. I'm assuming you guys did that for just watching TV shows and not something like gaming right? That would be too much overhead for something like Teamviewer.

paddy-stone · March 22, 2017

14 hours ago, Hikaru12 said:

That's actually pretty clever. I'm assuming you guys did that for just watching TV shows and not something like gaming right? That would be too much overhead for something like Teamviewer.

Yeah, it's too laggy for gameplay, plus doesn't really make sense for that usage IMO. It's fine for keeping up to date with stuff you would have normally done from that location, say you have a server/NAS there for storage for instance.. so saves you having to transport your server/NAS with you or have one at each location maybe for storage.

It's preference though, I don't like to store too much on local machines, I find it tedious and unnecessary... I find a centralised server/NAS to store data much more helpful as you can access that data from anywhere with a little work, and mostly can store stuff straight onto it too. Making file transfers and waiting for stuff like that almost extinct.. there are exceptions of course, but even lessening the copying of data if really worth it with a relatively cheap solution like FreeNAS, with some cheap-ish hardware that will serve a fair number of clients simultaneously with little effort.

The data drives are the most expensive part and may have to be replaced every 3-5 years if operating 24/7, and you probably should keep a backup of any important data on a different machine or USB storage device etc... I do. The actual hardware though should last you a fair while with decent parts, I would NEVER skimp on a PSU, decent tier 1 PSU should last you 5-10 years I would say for approx $80-130 tops.

I configured a suggested parts list for a client the other day.. came out at £534 for 6TB storage NAS, the CPU can be upgraded in the future if not up to task too... I told him to hold off on this for a month though as I want to see what the options are for AMD Ryzen CPUs, but not bad price wise. He didn't want to spend too much as he only wants it for centralised storage for his family.. very easy Freenas setup for that too, doesn't need anything like plex as he's of a similar mind to me and just uses formats that anyone should be able to play/read etc as it makes life easier and doesn't need too much CPU power for serving files IMO. I could have just used an off the shelf solution, but think in the long run they work out much more expensive than a bespoke solution, plus the upgradability of this is pretty good IMO if needed.

Parts list https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/R66C9W