Broadband Tech > Filesharing Software > Giganews VPN

Giganews VPN

Not so lucky to be on the beta testing invite list.

How's it look? What are your thoughts so far (besides liking it a lot)? What else can you do?

Bottom line - is it worth the extra money that Giganews charges compared to other providers?

reply to h8rogers
it's just a regular VPN. you connect to that and do all your internet activities through that connection. If this is free then it might be worth the extra $$$ only because I can now watch Hulu videos even though I am in Canada. VPNs are useful only because of privacy concerns.

reply to h8rogers

reply to h8rogers
Linky?

reply to h8rogers
Thanks

quote:

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Retail Version Coming Soon
VyprVPN will soon be released, direct to consumers from the VyprVPN website with service starting at $14.99. Sign up to receive email notification of the launch!

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reply to h8rogers
Ooh - you can get Hulu now? Okay - I'm convinced!

reply to h8rogers
You got access to 460+ days of a.b.multimedia and you all you care about it is Hulu.

The 460+ (or whatever it's up to now) days I get now - Hulu I don't. Although I'm sure anything that's on Hulu is likely on usenet as well.

But there are many other streaming sites that don't always have content on usenet and it would be nice if I'm able to connect to those now as well - e.g. UK sites, etc.

reply to h8rogers
I got the invite today and will be testing it out over the weekend on a couple home desktops (Mac OS 10.5.8, Mac OS 10.6.2, and Windows 7), a netbook (Mac OS 10.6.1), and just for fun, my iPhone.

I live in the Washington DC area and have unrestricted internet access, but am temporarily in a company townhouse, so the personal privacy offered by this is much desired.

So far on one desktop.....all the goodness of a fast VPN.

reply to h8rogers
I tried the VPN client today, after running it for about 15 minutes my firewall prompted me about a stopped attack. I have not been portscaned or attacked in the last 8 months so it's strange that it happened 15 minutes after using the VPN. I am not sure how safe this is, do you want them to have your banking passwords and such?

11/14/2009 6:59:05 PM Intrusion.Win.MSSQL.worm.Helkern 218.205.231.99 UDP 1434

reply to h8rogers
tried it a couple of days ago. The connection from
europe was ok, but slow (it was strange seeing google
in dutch). Got about 1Mb from speed tests vs 10Mb+
normally. The US connection could not even connect to
dslreports to run the speed test, could not connect
to many sites, so don't know what is going on there.

The europe connection seemed to drop after one hour
so be careful (bittorrent started making connections
with my normal IP).

reply to h8rogers
Is this VPN service supposed to be the "game changing" announcement that Giganews promised months ago?
--
Kaspersky + Online Armor + Router/SPI

That's my guess, unless Giganews has several irons in the fire and is introducing other new products. Usually a company only rolls out one major initiative at a time, and this seems to be it.

reply to Stem Bolt

I don't remember seeing this before, but on the Giganews site:

"VyprVPN, valued at $14.99 per month, is guaranteed free to Diamond customers until June 30, 2010. By then, Giganews & Golden Frog will determine if there will be a charge for this service and notify you to opt-in to continue using VyprVPN. Giganews values our loyal Diamond customers and will not charge for this service without your express consent." (Markup mine.)

I'm not a Diamond customer, and even for an extra $5/month I don't see it worth moving from Platinum to Diamond. Ironically this is an incentive for me to think about moving from Giganews. Since there is no "game changer" on its way for my level of service - a pricey $24.99/month - I have to decide if having such large retention is really that important.

I've been happy with Giganews, but based on the above, I think it's time to re-evaluate my provider.

reply to h8rogers
Just had to jump in here. I travel a lot, the ability to encrypt everything coming out of my laptop is a big bonus. Freely down-loadable sniffers enable anyone, who can read, the ability to pull POP passwords and some chat right out of the air off of open wifi networks. WEP is bogus as we all know so there is not a lot of protection when using wifi networks you do not control. VPN blocks anyone on the local network with you from seeing almost "anything" you are doing. I too hope it becomes added value to my Diamond account but 14$US still not a bad deal for that kind of security.

The ability to appear to be somewhere else can also be a bonus, ala Hulu for Canucks. A UK server would be nice for those BBC videos that are only streamed to UK IP's.

IMHO of course

»www.xirvik.com/vpn.html

Just an example. But if you need a simple VPN service there are places out there that will charge a lot less than $14/mo.