Shame that they removed port forwarding, I’ll definitely stick with them if it’s not the case.
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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I was so happy with MullVad until the port forwarding removal. €5 a month regardless and a very easy to use website. I moved to a 3 year purchase of AirVPN but it's a lot more finicky to use.
Whats so important about port forwarding on a VPN? Genuinely ignorant here.
If you're doing a P2P related activity over a VPN (or otherwise), port forwarding is very important for improving speed or enabling the service at all. That's because your router blocks incoming traffic from certain ports by default, ports that will be used with a P2P connection. To get around this, you can 'forward' a port that can be used for said P2P activity, letting your router know that the traffic you expect to see from a specific port should be let through.
You can simply leave port forwarding to your personal router, but if you want to stay anonymous while participating in P2P connections, then you'll want to use a VPN service. If a VPN service doesn't utilize port forwarding, then any P2P connections you use will either be straight up impossible, or very slow. For example, you wanted to host a gaming server without giving away your actual IP address, then a VPN with port forwarding is desirable. The same can be said for torrenting.
I appreciate the breakdown, but I meant i was ignorant on why port forwarding was important for a VPN :) Was still a great write up that should be used as reference for others! :D
I didnt realize you still had to port forward to get around ISP traffick shaping/blockage with a VPN. Thought the encrypted tunnel between you and the VPN disguised that, and any port stuff was done at their end, after exiting the tunnel.
VPNS with port forwarding matter if you want to stay anonymous while using P2P services.
@Helldiver_M @Dubious_Fart @leraje actually the port forwarding thing is about accepting inbound connections. Without port forwarding, NAT routers (including VPNs) randomly allocate ports for outbound connections but still won't accept inbound connections on those same ports.
There's a trick where you discover the randomly allocated port numbers and then both connect to each other at the same time so both routers think it's outbound. It works unreliably and BitTorrent doesn't use it.
Why doesn't the new UDP torrent protocol use STUN or any of the server- or peer-assisted ways of punching a UDP hole between two NAT-ed endpoints?
Jeez is this why my torrents slowed down to a crawl lately? I'm on Mullvad and wasn't aware they removed port forwarding, or even really what port forwarding is until now.
wait when did they do that?? I used to use mullvad port forwarding to ssh to my pc :(
A few months ago. They said that hosting companies and other providers were refusing to work with them if they continued with it as a feature.
It's just too easy to abuse by bad people using it to host very questionable content. Lots of people then moved to ivpn and then they removed it too, for the same reasons.
So who's left of the legit ones that offers it?
PrivateInternetAccess still supports it through most of their servers. I'm having success with them still
AirVPN is good so far
Oh dang. Was about to jump to Mullvad for that exactly. Sorry to hear it.
Ovpn.com still offers port forwarding however they were recently acquired by a us company which could be a red flag
can’t personally vouch but AirVPN still has PF if you need it.
The way they did port forwarding was so rock solid and stable being able to assign a port to your account and have it apply to any endpoint… but now that isn’t there I was forced to switch to ProtonVPN. Also my latest DL speeds with the closest node in my area with Mullvad WireGuard config is much slower than proton… sigh. I’ll keep what I already paid for on Mullvad but I won’t be renewing. 😢
I switch back to PIA because of this. Been rock solid and very fast.
That's probably fine for pirating stuff, but I hope you have no expectations of privacy. Terrible company.
Terrible how?
They were bought by an Israeli company that makes malware or adware.
Yea I know. Strictly for pirating. Used for Deluge and Arrs on my Unraid server
Such a good VPN for a really good price. I'll definitely be renewing when the time comes.
10,000%
I've been using Mullvad on PC/android for years... Even since the port forwarding has been removed I still use it. Been considering Proton though.
Anyone here use Proton(free or paid)? How is it?
Service is fine, but GNU/Linux support needs improvement.
They just changed their TOS to forbid paying customers from seeking any form of judicial remedy, so you can guess the direction they're headed.
Needless to say I won't be renewing.
Can you expand on what you mean by that please?
Got a replacement in mind yet?
Oh shit, I missed that they axed the port forwarding. Good thing I already set up alternate tunnels.
They offer -10% on Monero!
just switched to proton to save some cash but Mullvad have been great for years
Does ProtonVPN offer port forwarding?
Yes, but only on the paid plans
yes, but only if you pay, and the port you get isn't static, so it changes every certain number of minutes, so you need to find or juryrig something to auto update your torrent client to the right port.
Great product!