VPN services recommendations

[testing123]

Reading the reviews on this site, I would not trust it at all, as it's to me only ONE biased opinion with no real long test or usage experience with the VPN providers listed!

I am missing any valuable evaluation of the VPN service in respect of
- Privacy (Ts&Cs, Setup and handling of requests for seizure, customer data, VPN company structure, etc.),
- value for money (servers vs. speeds vs. usage of multiple servers),
- and so on...

It evaluates only the setup, money back and a fake support case with some speed tests (but without any value as is does to cover thinks like time of the day nor the overall load/capacity of the servers).

I could write this kind of lousy review within a day or two for each of the VPNs - this does not say ANYTHING about the quality, privacy and value of the VPNs in the long run usage!!!

What you say may be true, but it was the best source of info and 'objective' review I could find. Most of the other info I could find were affiliate articles/reviews. Plus, there is a comparison excell spreadsheet that lists all features if each.

Do you know of other, reliable sources of information?

 

[inPicton]

I have just started using windscribe, a Canadian business. Free 50 gb.

I have no idea how to tell a good one from a not so good one.

 

[inPicton]

I see comments saying I like such and such, no problem in 2 years. etc. How do you know if you have a good one or not? Just because you haven't been hacked doesn't mean that you would have been hacked had you not been using a vpn. I'm using Windscribe and haven't been hacked in 2 days.

 

[doczenith1]

OK, this is entirely too long, and I actually came to check out what router might help increase vpn speeds for the devices I put through the router vpn. I'm thinking the RT-AC68U, maybe in a dual router setup (vpn/normal traffic) with my RT-N66U, if anyone cares to comment.

I did some testing a while back that may help you with some reference numbers on throughput. These are my speeds using the OpenVPN client on two different ASUS routers. Both routers running Asuswrt-Merlin 380.64 firmware. Connecting to PIA VPN servers on port 1198.

AC3100 (1.4 Ghz dual core)
CTF (Cut Through Forwarding NAT Acceleration)
DL: 61 Mbps with core 1 at 25%, core 2 at 75%
DL :74 Mbps with core 1 at 30%, core 2 at 85% with mods*
UL: 84 Mbps with core 1 at 35%, core 2 at 100%

AC68U (1.0 Ghz dual core)
CTF enabled
DL: 44 Mbps with core 1 at 30%, core 2 at 80%
UL: 58 Mbps with core 1 at 40%, core 2 at 100%

For reference, when using the same PIA VPN server with a windows client I'm able to attain 250 Mbps down and 350 Mbps up on the same DSLReports HTML5 speed test.

The speed tests were conducted over a wired connection from the computer to the router.

Data encryption: AES-128-CBC
Data authentication: SHA1
Handshake: RSA-2048

*Adding the following lines to the custom configuration bumped the DL speeds to 74 Mbps.
sndbuf 524288
rcvbuf 524288
push "sndbuf 524288"
push "rcvbuf 524288"

 

[TheManFromUncle]

Any opinions on VyprVPN?

 

[sfx2000]

If I were a malicious entity, I would try to compromise either those VPN providers, or their upstream providers. These are tempting honeypots for a malicious entity.

No VPN is totally secure unless one controls both ends...

And in a post-Snowden world - VPN is just an end-point back on to the public internet - while the VPN providers might not collect logs, there's enough data from where one starts, and where one exits, a VPN, and while the data packets are encrypted, the headers are not...

And as @RMerlin suggested - A bad actor investing into a commercial VPN provider is a nice concentration point for data-collection/exploitation...

 

[primitivo]

Any opinions on VyprVPN?

It's good but nothing special. Probably it's the only VPN that has its own infrastructure and its IP are identified as residential instead of commercial. Commercial VPN servers are often blocked by some websites or captcha is required. Also it's the only VPN provider I know that allows you to deploy their VyprVPN server software to your custom VPS and use their native apps for VPN connection.

If you are Asus / MerlinWRT user, nothing beats Astrill in terms of speed. Their applet with optimised RouterPro protocol (OpenVPN) is very efficient. The speed depends on several factors but mainly the latency of the server you are connecting to. I am currently on 200/45 Mbps fibre connection with 1-2ms latency to local servers. If I connect via Astrill router applet RouterPro protocol to one of the local servers I get the latency of 5ms and speed of 120Mbps down / 45 up (RT-AC68U, CPU bottleneck). That's impressive I think. Obviously if I connect to to a server 100ms away, I am getting 50/25... Their desktop apps are the best in terms of flexibility (example: you can router via VPN selected browsers only; route only international traffic etc).

From the mid-range VPN providers I recommend VPN.ac , the speeds are very good, desktop apps are basic but their SecureProxy browser addon which works in Firefox, Opera and Chrome is nice as well if we don't want to use VPN for all traffic.

 

[Peter Kendrick]

It depends on your satisfaction, if the review feels justified to you then it doesn't matter where it's from. I have not heard about Windscribe. NordVPN is pretty much decent and provides good security in my experience. There are many other reliable VPN services that other providers are providing.

 

[CaptainSTX]

I do agree with you, I use Astrill too and have configured it over my router to work on my iPad and iPhone at the same time. Has been working really good. For torrenting and streaming i do use a dedicated IP by PureVPN.

Astrill VPN is fast. When I run it on a PC I can get 175 Mbps. I have been able to run it on a router running Merlin but when I switched over to a mini PC running Pfsense Astrill's tech support wasn't able to help with the setup. After two day of failed attemps I had to use a VPN from another supplier.

 

[Mulkern69]

Happy to know about this vpn connection provider. Few months ago, used a vpn for kodi and found it to be quite useful. They provided amazing speed and uninterrupted service. Also got access to sites which were blocked earlier.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Well i have not encountered any issue like this as yet. So, which other service provider did you choose to go for.

I went back to StrongVPN which I had used previously and worked well.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Any free trials with Strong VPN?

Not that I'm aware of. Sign up for a month at $10 and see if it works for you.