"RoS discovered a number of new findings, and we would like to thank them for their thorough and detailed report. They stated , amongst other things that: that whilst they found some issues, that: “The Mullvad VPN relays which were the subject of this test showed a mature architecture…” and “During the test we found no logging of user activity data…”
Shame that they removed port forwarding, I’ll definitely stick with them if it’s not the case.
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.
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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?
AirVPN is good so far
PrivateInternetAccess still supports it through most of their servers. I’m having success with them still
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.