VPS or VPN for speed

[fdsa]

2 minutes ago, Roger That said:

I guess it depends on some ISP routing.

yes, it is called BGP and as with many things in Thailand it is often made ass-backwards. For example I have to connect to some of my servers in Europe through Singapore because if connecting directly then Thai providers route the traffic through the United States instead of Russia, thus adding 300 extra ms to ping time.

 

You could check the routing using the traceroute or lft commands in the better operating systems, or tracert command if you use Windows.

 

e.g.

traceroute 80.249.111.5

 

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

A VPS in a data centre, as some are advising, won't work if you really need to fool many services. It's trivial for an adversary to do an ASN (Autonomous System Number) lookup on your IP and associate it with a data centre rather than a domestic IP. They can do this on the fly.

 

If your aim is to simply appear you are at home in the UK, then it's trivial to route all your traffic from anywhere in the world to your home connection with the most basic inexpensive equipment, and this is your best solution, no one will have any idea you're not actually there.

 

 

 

 

[brendan3150]

38 minutes ago, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

A VPS in a data centre, as some are advising, won't work if you really need to fool many services. It's trivial for an adversary to do an ASN (Autonomous System Number) lookup on your IP and associate it with a data centre rather than a domestic IP. They can do this on the fly.

 

If your aim is to simply appear you are at home in the UK, then it's trivial to route all your traffic from anywhere in the world to your home connection with the most basic inexpensive equipment, and this is your best solution, no one will have any idea you're not actually there.

 

 

 

 

so just set up my home router as a VPN ?

 

i can buy a new router if my current one doesn't allow this . i have a virgin media hum 3.0 . pretty sure i have had it for 3+ years so i am due an upgrade

 

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

On 3/26/2022 at 5:07 AM, brendan3150 said:

i can buy a new router if my current one doesn't allow this

Hint: OpenWRT

[brendan3150]

thanks led , i will take a look

[fdsa]

On 3/26/2022 at 4:27 AM, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

If your aim is to simply appear you are at home in the UK, then it's trivial to route all your traffic from anywhere in the world to your home connection with the most basic inexpensive equipment, and this is your best solution, no one will have any idea you're not actually there.

there are a lot of measures to detect your real IP address or at least give an approximate location. I've mentined the easiest one already - one line of Javascript:

Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone;

also google for "dns ip leak" and "webrtc leak".

 

Also, if the topic starter has to use a dedicated piece of software rather than simply opening some website in the browser then it's a very different (and very difficult) story. For example, most poker software act like a legitimate trojan - it installs deeply inside the operating system and extracts all possible information about the system - all installed programs (including VPN clients, of course), all network connections, all hardware identifiers, etc. And also it detects if it is running inside a virtual machine, and it will not work if it detects being inside a virtual machine. Because you could run multiple poker clients on the same computer + transparently route all traffic of the virtual machine thru the VPN tunnel, and poker websites do not like that behavior for obvious reasons.

 

[fdsa]

On 3/26/2022 at 5:07 AM, brendan3150 said:

i can buy a new router if my current one doesn't allow this . i have a virgin media hum 3.0 . pretty sure i have had it for 3+ years so i am due an upgrade

you don't really need to change the router if it supports the abovementioned operating system - OpenWRT, I do recommend it too. The routers do not need an "upgrade" as personal computers do (and they don't really need it too btw) because routers' hardware doesn't evolve as fast as computers' hardware does.

I have a perfectly working ~15 years old TP-Link WR1043ND 1st generation.

[brendan3150]

is it easy to install ( if that's the right terminology )  OpenWRT and then set it up so i can use my router to pass my traffic through when i'm in thailand ?

 

i am not that tech savvy but if there is an online guide i will give it a go

 

 

 

 

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

3 hours ago, fdsa said:

there are a lot of measures to detect your real IP address or at least give an approximate location. I've mentined the easiest one already - one line of Javascript:

Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone;

also google for "dns ip leak" and "webrtc leak".

 

Also, if the topic starter has to use a dedicated piece of software rather than simply opening some website in the browser then it's a very different (and very difficult) story. For example, most poker software act like a legitimate trojan - it installs deeply inside the operating system and extracts all possible information about the system - all installed programs (including VPN clients, of course), all network connections, all hardware identifiers, etc. And also it detects if it is running inside a virtual machine, and it will not work if it detects being inside a virtual machine. Because you could run multiple poker clients on the same computer + transparently route all traffic of the virtual machine thru the VPN tunnel, and poker websites do not like that behavior for obvious reasons.

 

None of this is relevant if you're routing with hardware (software and VPN apps are for amateurs), you just put a Pi at each end of the tunnel and plug in your LAN cable. It's essentially no different from a 10,000 kilometre long cable. There is nothing on the OS that can even come close to figuring out where it is. . . and it's trivial to change your timezone.

 

 

 

 

[somchaismith]

Ads everywhere.

[somchaismith]

On 3/28/2022 at 3:44 AM, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

None of this is relevant if you're routing with hardware (software and VPN apps are for amateurs), you just put a Pi at each end of the tunnel and plug in your LAN cable. It's essentially no different from a 10,000 kilometre long cable. There is nothing on the OS that can even come close to figuring out where it is. . . and it's trivial to change your timezone.

 

 

 

 

Interesting. Is the tunnel the LAN cable between the computer and router?

[soi3eddie]

On 3/25/2022 at 2:27 PM, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

Since you have a home in the UK, you can set up a Raspberry Pi, leave it switched on at home, run OpenVPN on it and just dial into the Pi from your notebook anywhere in the world. It'll be like you're surfing the internet at home. It's really that simple. You can expect speeds of 20 or 30 Mbps with a Pi3.

A similar thing works well for me when here in Thailand. I have a Synology NAS in my London home with private VPN setup. Not fast but is reliable Ping:208ms, Download:17mbps, Upload: 7Mbps. I have to use this when accessing some UK work websites that don't allow connections from outside the UK. More and more companies are blocking connections from countries that they have no business with. We have no business with China and Russia yet those are where most attempted breaches of our servers and websites originate. We block all connections from those and some other countries.

 

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

You can use anything, it doesn't have to be a Pi. It can be anything that'll run some flavour of Linux. Rocky Linux (the de facto replacement for CentOS) even have an aarch64 version as standard, which you can run on single board computers such as Pis. You can use an old desktop, anything you have laying around. Just set the motherboard to boot automatically in the case of power failure and it'll reliably operate autonomously.

 

5 hours ago, somchaismith said:

Interesting. Is the tunnel the LAN cable between the computer and router?

The tunnel is the logical link between the Pi (or whatever) in Thailand, and the Pi in your home in the UK. You can imagine it as very long cable from Thailand to your house in the UK. When you plug your computer into the LAN port at the Thailand end, you're effectively plugging into your router in the UK. This can be achieved with open source solutions such as the extremely reliable OpenVPN software. It's very simple for someone like me, but I understand it may be challenging for those without a background in IT.