Broadband Tech > Virtual Private Networking > VPN Review websights

reply to Packeteers

Re: VPN Review websights

interesting no sponcer biased list i found;

»pastehtml.com/view/1dzybe3.html

a more elaborate list that may be biased;

»vpnreviewz.com/

odd how they avoid reviewing BTGuard,
while including so many paid VPN & Proxy

»myvpnreviews.com/

can't tell if this place is biased - more like a popularity
contest with vpn's potentially reviewing themselves

VPNTunnel has been hit or miss performance so
when my Month with them expires, I'll might try
»www.ibvpn.com/
$5 torrent allowed unlimited.
this is in addition to BTGuard.
so I'll use BTGuard alone for recent poplar torrents,
(since many trackers don't allow proxy connections)
and IBVPN for old low seed poorly tracked torrents.
(where all trackers work, but at lower VPN speeds.

if anyone has better ideas, please chime in

I continue to dislike VPNTunnel more and more,
as their big resource hog client does not even
tell you which server is least congested, and
it's very cumbersome to keep trying different
VPN servers till you find one that's stable.
I'll get a IBVPN account next week, so I can
compare the two VPN's back to back before
my VPNTunnel Month expires.

BTGuard continues to impress on well seeded
torrents, but it drops half your trackers so
I will still need a VPN to get older torrents.

here's another semi-biased VPN review sight;

»www.vpnhero.com/

Arne, what's your point?
plenty of VPN's that allow torrent traffic
have similar policies, just as IBVPN does.
»www.ibvpn.com/privacy-policy.html
I got an email VPNTunnel is discounting
it's 1-2yr signup rates, and besides I'd
much rather have a Eastern European
based VPN who will ignore Americans
and their intrusive law enforcement.

I know you use VPNTunnel, but don't
be so sure they are the best out there
as this industry has evolve a lot in 2011
as it's customer base more than doubled.
BTW VPNTunnel never got back to me
about their server list so I could manually
configure VPN in Win'2K instead of using
their clunky .NET client. ignoring support
emails gives me little confidence with them.

one thing i do admire about VPNTunnel is
you simply pay with paypal directly, they
only ask for an account name/pw email.
IBVPN asks more than I'm comfortable with

this thread is getting pretty useless anyway,
since it's just you and me debating things,
nobody else here can be bothered to post.

Actually, I use an American VPN provider - a provider who prohibits illegal downloads of film and music.

In my eyes VPNtunnel is not the best VPN provider. But I use VPN for security when using WiFi, mobile internet and networks not under my control. I have no need for illegal downloading.

However, for those who want to use a VPN provider for torrent and other activities not entirely legal, may find that using the VPNtunnel's Swedish servers may be a good protection.

Also, I wanted to point out that VPNtunnel do logging on servers outside of Sweden.
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Main provider: Anveo - Secondary providers: Callcentric, CallWithUs, Localphone, Rebtel and VoIP.ms
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reply to Packeteers
Thanks for posting all of your results. I've been thinking of using btguard or some type of vpn along with my utorrent.

Zaii - i've updated my opinions since this thead here;
»[Newsgroups] Thoughts on VPN Services

in a nutshell:
Paypal finally refunded the $32 I wasted on torrentprivacy
I uninstalled vpntunnel's .NET client and stopped using them.
I did not get ibvpn - they wanted too much info at signup

I continue to like BTGuard, but will not renew* with them.
(higher cost and security, but half my trackers won't proxy)
I ended up getting linkideo VPN, and will stay with them.
(lowest cost, security not perfect**, but all trackers work)

If you want a simple secure solution and torrent mostly
currently popular tv movies and porn, BTGuard is great
with files that have many active seed:peers.

If you need to torrent older more obscure files that have
few or regional trackers (like asian stuff) then get a VPN,
since getting a file may take days off part time seeders.

if you get linkideo their €2 is PPTP and €5 is OpenVPN, so
you get better security in addition to 4x download capacity.
I would not bother getting their unlimited, since their low
cost plans are already faster than unlimited competitors.
on linkideo only torrent their German/Netherland servers,
not their French, UK or US servers.

* if BTGuard has some deep discount promotion, I may rejoin them.

** PPTP client drops VPN exposing your real IP while torrenting.
paying more to use OpenVPN may greatly reduce this problem.

With btguard do you have to download their version of utorrent, or can I just pop in their ip address in my existing copy?

at first i tried their directions to apply the proxy to 2.2.1
and it did not work, so i downloaded their copy of 3.1.2
but i suspect any 3.x version will work with their proxy.
try applying their changes to your existing utorrent, since
they can easily be undone or made inactive. if it don't work,
I suggest you start with their download just to make sure
you see it working, then later if you want to apply their
proxy to an already installed version, you can since I have
more than one versions installed on my PC as well.

one other downside of btguard vs a euro/VPN is;
I suspect btguard proxy is through Canada, which means
primetime in USA is the slowest time for Canada too.
a euro/VPN may actually be faster since all the traffic
on their end takes place while they are all sleeping.
but this is just my own private observation while comparing
the two side by side, it may have little basis in fact

the upside of btguard is in the month i've used it daily,
it has never once leaked - and not a single tracker has
tried to sniff my public IP during or even after using it.

Sounds good, I think I'll give btguard a shot.

Thanks

reply to Packeteers
I am loving this €2/month Linkideo (use with VPNetMon)
here I'm getting a huge game file and look at this
past hour of speed I'm enjoying limited to 512kb/s

reply to Packeteers
I tried the advanced set up and not having much luck with that. The trackers only seem to connect about 20% of the time. The torrent from checkmytorrentip.com shows the connection is working about 50% of the time, the other 50% shows proxy connection errors.

I'm running the lastest v3 of utorrent. I may try using their preconfiged version, not sure if that will make any differance.
When I googled the errors, they seem to be very common with btguard and also very common that btguard support never answers anyone about this issue.

Zaii - now you see why i only did BTGuard for a Month.

as i reported earlier if you add your own list of popular
trackers to existing torrents, that allows BTGuard to
find more active ones that do not restrict proxy peers.
I'll pm you the list i assembled thus far, just keep in mind
many may work but not be relevant to every file you try.
remember when you cut and paste it to add trackers to
each torrent, be sure there is a blank line between each.

Thanks. I did try to add a few myself. It even has a hard time connecting to openbittorrent.

from what i understand of how torrents work...

the reason many trackers don't take proxys is
that proxy users are considered selfish since
they can't seed files, they can only download.

i'm sure no proxy user loses any sleep over it

reply to Packeteers
 
Just an update regarding VPNtunnel in Sweden.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread VPNtunnel does not do any logging as there are no legal requirement for such logging in Sweden. The European Union law requires logging but Sweden has for several years refused to obey that law.

However, this will now end at the end of April this year. The European Court of Justice (EU's Supreme Court) has ordered Sweden to implement the logging requirement into the state law. The parliament in Sweden has decided to obey the European Court of Justice.
 
--
Main provider: Anveo - Secondary providers: Callcentric, CallWithUs, Localphone, Rebtel and VoIP.ms
Hosted PBX: PBXes.org - Phone: Gigaset S685IP --- PC OS: Ubuntu 11.10 - www

I did read about that... not that a decision was made so any link would be helpful.
I also read that soon all EURO members will abide by same logging standards so
we can expect VPN's that support torrent users to move some servers to
western Europe and/or Scandinavia.

however, one interesting thing I can report after VPN'ing thru
France and Germany is as soon as trackers see you are on a
Leaseweb, they don't bother sniffing your IP anyway, since
they know it's not "you" - then why bother, so still worth €2/mo

Here's my latest speed record while 15/1 on FR.Linkideo;

So, I'm trying out Linkideo now. Speeds are good on the french server however I can't seem to ever connect to the Netherland server.

here are your choices thus far;
pptp1 fr nl uk usa openvpn {torrent OK}

France seems faster than Germany(Netherlands)
usually what i do is i start with pptp1 and if the
connection is slow, i then try the other two.

I found it odd they allow torrent in France since
they are much tougher about file sharing than
than the Germans are. I emailed support a few
times about this, and they have not responded.

if you decide to drop BTGuard before your Month
ends, be sure to remove any autobilling from your
paypal account. once it expires you will get a few
reminder emails to pay BTGuard - just ignore them.

I finally see how Linkideo wants to be paid...
a week before your month is up they send you
an email with a link that forwards you to paypal.
they don't seem to offer any way to auto pay
or pay for several months in advance... odd
since they end up paying more in commission.

Yeah, I already canceled in paypal. btguard was pretty much unusable for me. Just wish I could get a connection to Netherland server, would just feel better using that one as opposed to the French one. Been using pptp1, it seems that one is France too.