this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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VPN and port forwarding (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago by svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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I am looking to buy a VPN subscription, and im interested in getting one that allows port forwarding. Found a few that still allows this, including pure VPN and air VPN which seem to offer good value for money, at least on the the long term plans. Any feedback on these two?

I used to have nordvpn, and used it for 3 years, and once that subscription ran out, have been using mullvad so far. Performance wise mullvad hasnt disappointed me or anything, but now im looking to find one that allows port forwarding.

I also have a doubt regarding the whole port forwarding thing, does the VPN having this feature enable to do it even if my ISP doesnt allow port forwarding? From the videos and articles I read, VPN port forwarding is just something you do inside their native apps and such, so if the ISP hasnt enabled port forwarding for me (which I know it hasnt, because tried to get jellyfin working the other day, and couldnt get the ports to open even after setting everything up in my router), will I still be able to do it? I tried searching around with this query, but didnt really find anything.

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[–] rhythmicotter@midwest.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I use AirVPN. It's reliable and I like their vpn client Eddie, but there are a few things you should know. Google blocks traffic from all of their Dallas servers, about 20% of their us based servers. Also, a few web hosting companies block AirVPN traffic, at least on the servers I use, including GoDaddy. I can't access the Linux Mint forums while on AirVPN either. Every day or two I have to disable the VPN to access a site, which defeats the purpose, IMO.

One good thing about AirVPN is that they have sales often. But I would try a week now before committing. Reliability has been top notch and they have a lot of servers.

Edit: I use port forwarding for bittorrent and it was easy to set up. You log in on their website and choose a port to forward for your account. I'm honestly a novice at networking and I figured it out using these instructions.

[–] svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thank you for the additional information, I am not in the US, and would not most likely be using their US servers. Web hosting services blocking the traffic seems concerning though, isnt GoDaddy one of the big player?

[–] Nitrate55@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I switched to AirVPN a month ago and haven't encountered a single site blocking me from connecting with my VPN so far. I looked up GoDaddy and connected with the VPN on and it didn't block me from going on the site. I connected with servers in Canada and the US. GoDaddy appears to be a site that sells domains, so even if they blocked people connecting to their site, I doubt they could force anyone who buys a domain from them to block VPN connections as well. And if they really are one of bigger domain retailers on the internet, I'm sure I would've encountered a site registered with them by now that's blocking me from connecting.

Other than that, my experience with the VPN has been good so far. Page load times are good, port forwarding works, and download speeds reach the max for my internet plan. They appear to have a good privacy track record as well. I'd recommend it.

[–] rhythmicotter@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Maybe I just go to different sites than you, but I run into problems accessing web sites from AirVPN fairly often. Its also possible that the AirVPN servers that you use are not blocked like they are for mine (Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, etc).

Like I said above, the best thing is to try any VPN service for a few days or a week to see whether anything annoying happens in your use case before jumping into a long term contract.

[–] Nitrate55@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

the best thing is to try any VPN service for a few days or a week to see whether anything annoying happens in your use case before jumping into a long term contract.

Agreed, that's actually what I did with AirVPN myself before switching to it. Got their 3 day plan and used it the whole way through until I knew the service would work for me. It's too bad not every service offers short plans this way. Fortunately, a lot of them do have 30 day refund policies, so you can just get any plan then cancel and request a refund before the 30 days are out.

Its also possible that the AirVPN servers that you use are not blocked like they are for mine

I think that might be the issue. I almost always connect through Canada servers, since those are always the fastest servers for torrenting and browsing when I sort the servers on the interface by latency vs torrent speeds. I do sometimes connect through their New York servers though, and haven't really noticed any blocking when I do. Maybe they only block some US servers and not others, or I just don't connect through the New York servers often enough to notice any blocking.

[–] rhythmicotter@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, GoDaddy is a very popular hosting company. I would do a short trial on any VPN before committing to a longer contract. It is possible that the sites you visit won't block your geographically local airvpn servers. Web hosting companies treat different servers from the same VPN differently.

[–] svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Edit: I use port forwarding for bittorrent and it was easy to set up. You log in on their website and choose a port to forward for your account. I’m honestly a novice at networking and I figured it out using these instructions.

Do you know what the ISP port forwarding status is, in your case, or is that irrelevant to setting it up?

[–] rhythmicotter@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't know really anything about network setup, but as far as I know, your ISP should have nothing to do with it while you use a VPN.

All I had to do was change the settings on the AirVPN account on their website (logged in) and add the port to my qbittorrent settings. This is unrelated, but I also added a killswitch in qbittorrent advanced settings that stops torrenting if my vpn connection fails. After that, I went to a site like https://canyouseeme.org/ and verified my port forwarding was set up properly.

I never had to touch my router or ISP settings. My configuration is running the VPN from each device. It is also possible to set up your VPN directly on the router. That way, all traffic on the home network is through the VPN.

[–] yooman@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not sure about port forwarding, but I can vouch for AirVPN as a service. Never had a single problem with them in 4 years of usage, plus the people who run it are pretty cool activists for net neutrality.

[–] svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

That seems something I would like to stand behind then, thanks!

[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

does the VPN having this feature enable to do it even if my ISP doesnt allow port forwarding?

Yes, VPN itself is an encrypted connection to the VPN server. As long as the VPN service has port forwarding available on their VPN server then you will have that feature available when you connect to them. But it has to be done through the VPN connection e.g. nothing to do with your ISP.

Also see the earlier posts in !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com e.g.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/465513

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/312389

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/276577

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/193626

[–] svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

That is what I wasnt able to wrap my head around, thank you for clarifying it for me. I will look through the posts and decide which one suits my needs and I can afford. Thank you again for your answer, and the links!

[–] thorbot@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Port forwarding is a function that can reside both inside your network and outside your network. What exactly are you trying to do with your ports? Generally what it does is allow traffic from the WAN zone (outside) to be directed to a specific device inside your network. Also, if you use a private tracker with good reputation there’s not a need for VPN at all. What exactly are you trying to accomplish with forwarding ports?

[–] svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do not have a defined purpose exactly. What felt appealing to me about having something like port forwarding with a VPN subscription, it would mean I can avail it wherever I physically am, and without having to give any consideration to whether my ISP at the moment allows me to or not, since my living situation is a bit fluid and I move around a bit. If I am able to avail it, wouldnt I be able to avail some self hosted services, like jellyfin, regardless of where I am, and be able to share with friends and family.

[–] thorbot@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’m still not sure why you’re trying to use port forwarding in that case. You can just use the VPN service on any device from anywhere. Port forwarding is typically only for someone hosting a server inside their network that they want outside people to be directed to when browsing to their public IP address. You don’t need it for torrenting.

[–] svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As I understand it, port forwarding is very much needed for torrenting when you're seeding. But in my case, I was curious about using a service like jellyfin for sharing my media to people I know over internet, a service which does require open ports.

[–] Pulp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Definitely recommend using port forwarding for seeding. But seems like you want multiple ports. Have to make sure the provider you use allows that. Alternatively you could use VPN to port forward your torrent client and cloudflare tunnels to allow access to Jellyfin

[–] svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

I dont really need the use of multiple ports simultaneously. Im ashamed to say it, but I do not do that much seeding, I use mostly public websites with public trackers. So its not really for the torrenting aspect I was curious about port forwarding about. As I mentioned in my post, it was when I was trying to see whether I can set up a jellyfin service for people I know to access my music that I found my ports cannot be opened. So it was with regard to that my post was initially about. Anyways, thanks for your input.

[–] thorbot@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

It’s not required at all. It helps if you want to set up a seed box specifically for boosting your ratio but you can run a torrent program without port forwarding and it works just fine. I’ve been doing it for 10+ years.

[–] BillionsMustSeed@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

edit: you were asking for feedback about specifically those two VPNs, so my comment was useless.

[–] notenoughbutter@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

there's also ivpn

[–] axzxc1236@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] rambos@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Switched from millvad to airvpn recently for same reason. I even got some assistance to config gluetun, great and quick support

[–] Alimentar@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

~~You can port forward with mullvad easily~~

[–] 133arc585@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mullvad does not allow port forwarding.

They announced on May 29th that they would not allow new port forwarding. On July 1st, all existing port forwarding was disabled. Since then, Mullvad no longer allows port forwarding.

[–] Alimentar@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Oh no! I had no idea. Man that really sucks. They were such a good service

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