What Vpn Do You Use? And How Is The Performance?

[jyoung142]

I will be traveling to Thailand in a week for a one month stay. I would appreciate hearing from folks using a commercially available VPN for a secure connection. What service? What plan? Through what local ISP?

I have found the following providers (available in USA) but uncertain on their performance and reliability in Thailand.

All suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

HotspotVPN

$8.88 a month / $88.80 for 1 year

PublicVPN

$5.95 a month / $59.95 for 1 year

Jiwire Spotlock

$4.95 a month / $49.95 for 1 year

Witopia PersonalVPN

$39.95 per year

[autonomous_unit]

Secure connection to what? The question doesn't make any sense to me.

You normally use a VPN to connect into some private space such as a corporate or home network. There is no way somebody can give you a "VPN service" that would do this... it requires software or hardware running both inside your private network and on the mobile systems out on the Internet.

A third-party service would only protect the traffic until it reached their network and then it would continue unencrypted the rest of the way. Why would you trust some random VPN provider and the "other half" of the Internet anymore than you trust the first half you would talk through without the VPN?

[phazey]

I'd be careful with a commercial service. As this circumnavigates Thailand's Internet Content Restrictions, if it works now, it may not work in the future. i also believe even doing so now is a criminal offence (or at least it's been proposed).

Saying that, I think last time i was over I could connect back to my office VPN, so it seems a catch 22 situation.

Best bet is to run a server at your office/residence with PPTP enabled, and if you can connect to that, try it.

[Rice_King]

Best bet is to run a server at your office/residence with PPTP enabled, and if you can connect to that, try it.

... or install Hamachi on the office/residence machine(s) and the portable you'll be bringing with you to Thailand. The only drawback being is that those office/residence machine(s) will need to be powered on for the duration of your stay here in Thailand. Otherwise, you could have someone there power them up for you at predesignated times.

[jyoung142]

Secure connection to what? The question doesn't make any sense to me.

You normally use a VPN to connect into some private space such as a corporate or home network. There is no way somebody can give you a "VPN service" that would do this... it requires software or hardware running both inside your private network and on the mobile systems out on the Internet.

A third-party service would only protect the traffic until it reached their network and then it would continue unencrypted the rest of the way. Why would you trust some random VPN provider and the "other half" of the Internet anymore than you trust the first half you would talk through without the VPN?

To be honest, the dismissive and agitated tone of your reply was disappointing. I have always thought that this forum was a place to feel okay to ask a polite question and to get a well thought out and civil and considered response. You posed me a few questions in your reply I would like to answer for you.

"Secure connection to what" you ask?... My reply would be : a secure connection to a point where the network is not nearly as vulnerable to interception from local network peers and local gateway employees. Yes corporate users use VPNs to connect to their business networks. Why do you think that is? To protect the business information that could easily be intercepted while outside the corporate domain. I am not asking a commercial VPN provider to do this (see my original question). I am interested though in encrypting my LOCAL traffic from interception until it is in the much safer zone. Once my traffic hits the VPN's severs it can not be sniffed by the fellow sitting across the room, or just outside the room, running sniffer software (http://www.ethereal.com/), and my traffic is now one of thousand using that service so it is much harder to pick out what bits are mine, as if anyone there cares at that point.

You asked me "Why would you trust some random VPN provider and the "other half" of the Internet anymore than you trust the first half you would talk through without the VPN"? My answer is because I am running on an unencrypted, open, in the clear peer network in THAILAND, where daily incomes are less than I make in an hour and it is incredibly easy for someone to have a look if I let them. The likelihood is much greater that data interception attempts will happen in the local space, from a local peer, or WAP admin (who can easily pick out your traffic and reconstruct it as they please) as opposed to a server back in the continental USA with a T1 connection to the backbone.

If anyone does not think there is a difference in the security risk between an open hotspot in Bangkok and a T1 server connection in California that is ok. Consider me naive, silly, and looking to throw my money away if that makes you feel better. I was simply asking for advice from folks that had some experience with this type of service.

SCENARIO: You open your laptop, connect to the local open hotspot (after it warns you that the connection is insecure) and start browsing the web, and sending your email messages at a Bangkok wifi hotspot (pay or not) that is running without WPA strong keyword encryption (all public hotspots: from the Narita UA Business lounge & the neighborhood Starbucks in Bangkok]. When you are running on a open access point you are on the same local area network as every other client on the network. And as a member of a LAN you can easily have a look at the packets of information that the LAN is carrying. This is the fundamental property of Ethernet. All the information in that local network is retransmitted to all members of the network, so you can have a free look if you like. And if you choose, you can see what your peers on that network are doing, their passwords, their visiting websites, etc. Without a VPN tunnel running on your system ALL your WiFi traffic is out in the open and free to be looked at, including your user-names and passwords to every account you are connected to. The matter to take a look at this information is a very simple matter and can be done with any number of "sniffer" software applications. For 99.99999% of network traffic that is of no concern. But say you need to login to your overseas bank to make a funds transfer or pay a bill...? Without a local VPN running everyone within range of your WiFi signal, the folks connectedly to that router, that network, the administrators of the local gateways and servers all can get your logoin information and now have access to your bank account. The VPN is an encrypted tunnel from the point the signal leaves your computer to the point the VPN connects to the net.

Hamachi (https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/) is a great (and FREE) service to allow you to safely and securely connect to any remote computer by your own private VPN connection, allowing file transfers or running any VNC application (Free) to surf and works from that remote computer's desktop. Trouble is, what happens if that remote desktop machine, sitting in your office on the other side of the planet, goes off line, or hangs (not that MS operating systems ever freeze up or hang :-)) and you are not schedule to be back there for a few more weeks? In that case you have just lost your secure connection to the net. Also the issue of bandwidth may be problematic as you are dependent on the slowest link in this connect (usually the 128K to 256K upload speed). So a commercially available VPN, while not a comprehensive Point-to-point VPN answer does get you an encrypted SSL tunnel from your machine, past all the snooping eyes and ears around you, out of your local network, past the local connections and servers, past the ISP's staff, and back to the VPN server (usually in your home country). The benefit of the commercial VPN provider is that they have redundant servers that are more likely to stay up and running, and if a server has an issue there are redundant machines to take up the slack.

Unsecured WiFi traffic is sent as pure raw text, in the clear. If you never send any information over an unencrypted (WPA with 63 character random key) WiFi connection that you would not consider confidential then a VPN does not make sense for you. But if you ever enter a username and password to login (email, banking, credit card account, FTP, etc.) then not using a VPN means that your communications are available for anyone that might want to have a look. Could be the someone in a next door apartment or the underpaid IT tech at the local TRUE office. Sure you can trust that everyone is honest and that there is no one that wants that password.... But I would rather not walk around broadcasting all my login information in the clear for anyone with to have a look see if they like.

Don't believe me. If you are happy and content running without a VPN that is all well and fine. But to hear another perspective I might suggest you have a listen to some folks that have a bit more experience in this area than I do, and you likely have as well. I stumbled across the following discussions that others might find interesting:

The following Netcasts are posted here: http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm

* http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-010-lq.mp3 : Open Wireless Access Points

* http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-014-lq.mp3 : Virtual Private Networks (VPN): Theory

* http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-015-lq.mp3 : VPN Secure Tunneling Solutions

* http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-017-lq.mp3 : PPTP and IPSec VPN Technology

* http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-018-lq.mp3 : "Hamachi" Rocks!

* http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-019-lq.mp3 : VPNs Three: Hamachi, iPig, and OpenVPN

If you do not use a VPN, don't want to, can't see why you would ever want one, that is great for you. But I would prefer to protect my traffic when I want to.

But now back to my original question; IF you use a VPN (commercial) while in Thailand which one have you decided works best for you in Thailand?

- Jeff

[Rice_King]

I for one, would be interested in which service you choose and how it works from halfway around the globe.

Regardless of what service you choose, I think that the main issue you're going to have is latency. It can be, more often than not, a slow connection from here to the US. An encrypted VPN might be pushing the limit. Maybe. Maybe not.