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StrongVPN has good anti-logging policies and poor security practices. It based is in the USA, which has a poor internet privacy record.Popularity trend
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Dear German (and other foreign) friends, I'd like to make you aware of the existence of VPNs. They're pretty cheap, and will unblock all of this stuff as well as mask your browsing history to your ISP. Personally, I use StrongVPN. It's like, 8 bucks a month USD and if you get a server in the states, your computer will act as if you're located in the US, bypassing all of those stupid location filters.
Edit: There might be a speed hit given the cross-country internet, but trust me, it's worth it. (Example of speed hit would be say, normal ISP is 50 mbit, but you'd only get 10-15 on the VPN.)
Netflix via StrongDNS, currently works with Windows or Mac OS X web browser only. Therefore, I suppose what you really want :) is not StrongDNS, but rather StrongVPN.
Been using a VPN, that doesn't keep logs for a couple of years I've even got a couple of VPS' that run VPN servers that I can connect to, my ISP has no fucking idea what I'm up to, LOL
I've only ever had one DMCA notification and that came from StrongVPN when I was using their service for accessing Netflix and Hulu. I accidently started torrenting and let it finish while the connection was open.
The main thing is you don't pick a US VPN service all of them have to keep logs by US law and you do some fucking good research on the web as to whether any VPN service you are considering keeps logs. Also, don't pay for a full year if they decide to change their logging rules you will end up out of pocket
I really don't know, but my own personal choice is StrongVPN (.
Their customer support is superb, and the VPN service is fast and reliable. So far, whenever I had any questions or issues, they have been dealt with promptly and efficiently.
I'm a US citizen, living and working abroad.
What I did was set up a corporation (LLC) in the US before leaving. All of my accounts are tied to the corporation, which is a "US resident". Off-hand, the accounts that I have are: PayPal, Amazon affiliate sales, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, ClickBank, Google CheckOut, Google AdSense, and Commission Junction.
For a US address, I use an Earth Class Mail address. They have an option where I can have them deposit any paper checks I receive. I have a US phone number through Skype. I also have a US-based VPN (StrongVPN), in case I ever need to log in to a website and look like I'm in the US.
The tax situation is a whole other thing, but I pay an accountant to handle all of that (and get me the large Foreign Earned Income Exemption).
^Copied ^from ^another ^post ^of ^mine. ^It ^felt ^appropriate ^to ^share ^it ^here:
EDIT: September 26
StrongVPN is able to bypass Netflix Geo-block in the US & in the UK.
I apologize for giving out wrong information, by saying there were more countries.
I travel extensively to Europe and Asia and got hooked on a U.S. program that can only be streamed within the U.S.
A good friend recommended a VPN service from StrongVPN.
Anyone here who could vouch for hoping to hear from someone with a personal experience…
>"Changed provider to TorGuard" ()
Smart! Extremely difficult for Netflix to Detect and Block Dedicated IPs.
Dedicated IP + Excellent Support + 50% Lifetime Discount = TorGuard.
StrongVPN is not even close!! AND their subscriptions cost more as well.
It's a NO-Brainer! I guess you have to be STUPID to choose "Strong" over TorGuard. Quiet Ironic, given the fact that StrongVPN is one of the best VPN providers there is.
Most of the free VPNs are heavily targeted by the Chinese government. If your friend can easily send funds out of the country, then I'd recommend getting a paid VPN. I use StrongVPN, worked with no problems for almost a year now.
macOS doesn't have a built in VPN. It (like Windows and Linux) provides support for various VPN protocols but those still require that you have a service to connect it to.
As a general rule if you use a free VPN you're going to be competing with everyone else who has a free VPN which, at minimum, means it's going to be abysmally slow and congested. Further, the VPN has to finance itself somehow, be it through injecting advertising into your browser traffic or worse, and that's ill advised if you're using one to protect your internet activity.
I have had good experiences with StrongVPN, personally, which isn't super expensive. Other people likely have other suggestions as well but I've kept a StrongVPN subscription since about 2009 and it's worked well for me.
I'd highly recommend not using free services, as they can be dangerous at worst and bad experiences (slow browsing speed & tons of other people on the connection) at minimum.
This was posted a few days ago. Torrentfreak article on what VPN's log you versus which maintain your anonymity. The ones already posted here list StrongVPN and cryptocloud which both keep track of what you to cover their asses I'm sure you understand.
EDIT: September 26
StrongVPN is able to bypass Netflix Geo-block in the US & in the UK.
I apologize for giving out wrong information, by saying there were more countries.
Some companies are doing this for PR, nothing more. It also makes no sense. From PIA blog:
> China’s new national security law allows law enforcement to seize servers located in Hong Kong without a warrant and otherwise execute warrantless interception of communications.
Why not remove all US servers then? Warrant-less interception was INVENTED there.
- Why did PIA pull their HK servers but not Cyberghost? (same parent company owns those)
- Why did StrongVPN do it but not IPVanish (same parent company)
Seize the servers, there is nothing on them.
> no UDP so they block OpenVPN
Not exactly. They use DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) to locate VPN users, and then block all connections to the server IP. In fact, they have a deal with StrongVPN, where they do not block any StrongVPN ports. The only reason that UDP connections tend to be blocked more than TCP is that it is harder to differentiate between a VPN TCP connection and a HTTP TCP connection. Using something like obfsproxy client and server side will allow you to connect via UDP with no issues.
NordVPN es de lo mejor que hay y de los pocos que hace el esfuerzo para rodear específicamente el pedo de Netflix y su blacklist. Hablando de VPN como tal es de los mejores. Eso sí, también esta en la parte alta de precios. Otros buenos son StrongVPN y F-secure.
Dicho eso, puede que para esto del contenido sea un poco overkill. Haz intentado popcorntime? Talves tu moral te dice que no y eso es válido. Pero si ya estas pagando por Hulu, Netflix, y todo eso pues desembolsar más solo por tu país no se siente tan padre ni justo. Sea como sea, buena suerte!
StrongVPN, or any VPN for that matter, could negate ISP data shaping. Your ISP can't see what VPN traffic is because it's encrypted, therefore the network shapers can't apply rules to it.
If Cogent was dropping packets, for the reasons nycola's mentioned, they would be dropped whether you were in a VPN or not.
>This company did not directly answer our questions but pointed us to their logkeeping policy instead.
>StrongVPN do log and are able to match an external IP address to their subscribers. We have included them here since they were the most outwardly aggressive provider in our survey when it came to dealing with infringement.
>“StrongVPN does not restrict P2P usage, but please note sharing of Copyrighted materials is forbidden, please do not do this or we will have to take action against your account,” they told us, later adding in a separate mail: “StrongVPN Notice: You may NOT distribute copyright-protected material through our network. We may cancel your account if that happens.”
- Which VPN Providers Really Take Anonymity Seriously?
Say that you don't have a password on your wifi.
In nearly every developed nation it has been ruled that IP address =/= a natural person.
Also, get a VPN. I have one for AU$100 / yr and they also don't take any shtick from Hollywood or DCMA. Some, like StrongVPN, will give up your details if asked.
I like the sentimentality of your idea. If you want to err on the practical side, she might appreciate a VPN subscription so she can avoid the great firewall. I use StrongVPN.
StrongVPN is hosted and located in the US. Personally I do not trust ANYTHING hosted from the US or from US-based companies. The NSA can force them to put in a back-door and force them to not reveal that they have that. The one I linked is Danish but delivering out of a Bahamas corp. so not bound by EU logging regulations either. Also they have very high speed servers. I think you get what you pay for.
Personally, I prefer StrongVPN or hide my ass. But I don’t do too much torrenting. I also had Proton VPN, but I can say for sure that it is not reliable for torrenting. The internet speed becomes extremely low. So, you can barely download something because of the low internet speed. Seriously, it takes a couple of hours to download an app or something. So, don’t go for Proton if you are really into torrenting and streaming videos. Besides, I faced some other bugs with it, so I canceled my subscription. If I’m paying for something, I need something reliable.
I also heard that HideMyAss VPN is also good. But I haven’t tested it on my own skin yet. So, I can’t say anything for sure about this one.
Also, CyberGhost VPN is not that bad either. In some cases, it has more pros than cons. But for more details, I suggest you check out this review —
You can collect statistics on your potential customers in order to improve your sales, via in-house solutions, like for example, and countless other self-hosted statistics platforms. You don't setup external trackers that feed this data to 3rd parties (7 different ones in case of StrongVPN), which aggregate it, and profile users across websites they visit. This very counter-intuitive to the type of industry that these companies are supposedly in.
Assuming your ISP isn't fucking things up, there are definitely quality VPNs out there. I used StrongVPN for a month or two, to great success. I still maintained probably close to 95% of my bandwidth, and my latency was good, only going up by around 20ms. I only used StrongVPN to get around routing issues for League of Legends, so I don't know how well they fair privacy wise.
> What's the best thing to do to make sure she has reliable internet that isn't dial up speed?
Not come to China.
But seriously, get a VPN. I used StrongVPN and it was good, with excellent customer support. As you've noticed from the comments, speeds in China are all over the place. Mine varies depending on the time of day, and friends with the same service I have have different speeds. It's fucking stupid.
Hang on. I thought it was already here?! Haha
NetFlix, Hulu, The History Channel. Hell, just this morning I activated PBS Kids for my daughter, so that she can watch it on our Apple TV.
For anyone interested in doing the same. Checkout or grab a VPN from a place such as StrongVPN.
Some tips.
If your ever asked for an address. Use an American hotels address. If your paying. Don't use an Australian PayPal account. Got caught out here. You might want to setup an American iTunes account. Just purchase a US ITunes voucher online. You might have to try a few different credit cards. Some may be flagged as Australian. Failing that, get a temporary debit card.
I currently live in Japan and am playing Tera via a VPN, and it's working just fine. StrongVPN is what I use and so far it hasn't let me down. EDIT: To be clear I've been playing on the NA Tera servers.
Yea I live in Peru with a US account. I have StrongVPN to use USA netflix and have my regular Peruvian Netflix. There a a lot of shows/movies available in Peru that are not available in the US. It's great to have all those options. I do wonder though, why doesn't US Netflix offer more Spanish subtitles/audio? My girlfriend speaks limited English and we can't watch a lot of US shows because of this. With all the Latinos living in the US I'm pretty surprised by this.
I've recently been trying out StrongVPN and seems to work well.
But Spotify is funny because you don't really need a VPN. You only need a VPN for their sign up page, or any web based proxy were you can suffer through the sign up process. After I signed up I could use their software and stream without any VPN, I can even buy songs with an Icelandic credit card. I've only tried this here in Iceland though, check it out and see if it works. I used to sign up.
Not working for me right now. Using StrongVPN.
If they can actually do this, I wonder how much business they are going to lose? I pay $7.99 a month for HuluPlus. Are there 10,000 people doing this or are there 100,000.
Virtually everyone I know watching Hulu or Netflix through a VPN is an American living in a foreign country. They are just trying to pay for something they could get at home. All these folks will turn to torrents if this continues. Great way to prevent piracy.
StrongVPN, a private VPN, top notch service, I use it because I live in Mexico and some of my banking requires an USA IP, also some video content in the net is USA only so it works for that as well...
I recently setup a StrongVPN account after reading the previous post about that resolving the ice skating/comcast/cogent lag issue. StrongVPN ended up fixing the issue as far as I can tell, since setting it up I've yet to have a game where I lag. That being said my ping did go from 85 to about 100, but I haven't noticed any difference in response time from the game.
Except that I got me one of those letters delivered through the VPN guys.
> Please note we have received a DMCA notification regarding the IP your VPN account uses. File sharing of copyright material is a violation of our Policies and USA Federal law. > > We understand that computers can be infected with a virus and cause these kinds of complaints to be generated. > > Please check your system for any software that could be causing this problem. We would have to disable your account if the activity continues. > > No action will be taken at this time, but if the DMCA complaints continue it will be with great regret on our part to deactivate your account. > > If you would like more information on the complaints received, you can view the complaint in the customer area. > > Best Regards,
> StrongVPN / Reliablehosting Abuse Team
I went with StrongVPN last year and just got the $7/month domestic package. It let's you switch between a few different cities so being blacked out isn't really an issue and it's probably faster than connecting to a VPN overseas.
I was going to ask netsec anyway - what are some of the best options in the USA for a VPN service? StrongVPN? Would this bill force those VPN providers to record everything as well, making out-of-country VPN service the only possible choice?
Download ES File Explorer on your Shield.
Download StrongVPN APK on your computer. Copy it to a USB Stick
Plug USB Stick into Shield and open ES File Explorer. There you will find your USB Stick and can install the APK from there.
More then likely you will have to allow Unknown sources in the permissions + Security in the shield settings before starting all of this.
Rinse and repeat for any apps you can't find on the play store on the shield
I would suggest using a VPN (StrongVPN is a service I use) that gives you an IP address outside your region to purchase and download. I'm not sure on the laws in Turkey when it comes to VPNs and internet usage so compare that with what I suggested and determine your course of action.
The formula is simple. If you have a deadline anywhere in the notice - you are in trouble. If the date isn't written down it's less severe of a warning.
Being in the U.S. you are flipping a coin - being sued is an actual risk .
The worst offense is "seeding" copyrighted content - i.e. if any form of torrent download software is running on your own IP they track that and you can get into trouble.
The moment you move the torrent downloads to a second location ( Seedbox, VPN , torrent download services ) you are safer since that's not what they track , and your transport to those locations is encrypted.
I've worked in several torrent downloading services , you can PM me if interested.
About VPN I would recommend StrongVPN ( easy to setup and great technical support ) -> I use their services personally .
I use unblock us as well. I have it set up on a second router and stream Netflix and Hulu via Apple TV, Playstation, and a Chromecast. Works like a charm.
Unblock us is 5 bucks/month or $50/year. It's well worth it. I used StrongVPN before but got much slower download speeds.
Gresham resident. I switched to FiOS with Frontier from Comcast.
For about the first year I used it I barely had any issues come up. Never have to reset the modem but maybe once every 6 months.
Then about 3 weeks or so ago I started to have these same issues over and over again. So I purchased a VPN account at through a friends recommendation.
It costs me 7$ a month and I never encounter internet issues anymore. Its back to normal. I think everyone up here around the Portland Metro are just getting throttled like crazy if you have broadband of any kind. VPN's can protect you from that.
Oh ok. The installers are just VPN clients, nothing nefarious if you stick to tried-and-tested solutions and most have free trials for you to try out before committing to purchase. It's usually USD5 to 10. A friend of mine is using StrongVPN and I'm using my ISP's proxy service to get US content in my country. Able to stream HD so it's worth it.
You can search for free ones but speeds will always be flaky.
Can't help you regarding AnyConnect though. Hope you can your stuff sorted out. Cheers!
I had the same exact experience using StrongVPN. $7 a month for a 7 down connection and it absolutely ran laps around my 30 down 5 up Comcast connection, for a fraction of the price.
Youtube, Netflix, all sorts of HD porn websites, all loading instantly with little to no buffer. When you're connected to a VPN your web traffic is masked, if your ISP cannot see what you're accessing, they cannot throttle it.
On the Comcast connection I would be lucky if HD EVER started loading. This video doesn't even point out the transition from normal to HD video when connected to the VPN, but you could imagine that his fiber connection would have never even got around to loading 1280x720. (720p)
It's cheap, and appears to be run by a nest of Russian hackers = fucking incredible 24/7 tech support if you have any problems (which is pretty rare), plus they now have mobile apps as well.
To me it looks like they are just trying to take advantage of people. I say this because there is ~$100 mark up on the Asus RT-N66u. (I have this router and bought it from amazon) It already comes with Asus' modified version of DD-WRT on it. Even if it comes set-up for StrongVPN thats an insane mark up for a few config settings.
I will also add some routers have a built in fail safe to allow flashing of firmware should you muck it up and flash the wrong firmware or loose power while flashing. The N66U is one of these routers.
I also read on TF in a related article that I navigated from this one to that StrongVPN, which I use to connect to America from here in China to access websites normally blocked here, logs what users do and takes the side of the U.S. Government in terms of torrents, meaning they would cancel my services and help seek legal action against me if they found that I violated any U.S. law.
So that means that when my VPN runs out I will not be subscribing to them again :) I'd prefer that my torrents and fetish porns not be logged.
If you're going to be translating something with google translate, make sure you've written in correctly in the source language first, otherwise you'll end up with a hilariously bad translation.
Anyways, StrongVPN has servers in Norwasy.
Just lost access 3 days ago from Singapore. StrongVPN still hasn’t sorted it out (AFAIK).
This usually happens once every couple of months but generally they just give me a new sever to connect to. Not sure what is happening this time.
It's a cat-and-mouse game: they look for VPNs (just like they successfully did to kill all the DNSs people were using), new VPNs open, and repeat. I've had success using NordVPN to connect to different countries on Netflix, and I unsubscribed to StrongVPN after it stopped working. I contacted customer support at Nord and they told me some servers to try and they still work.
Been with StrongVPN for a couple of years using Tunnelblick on Mac. Killer speeds (on a 30 meg line, getting 17 meg/min with the VPN) with the right amount of tweaking (UDP over port 443) and a free "scramble" mode. Very good tech support, and all UK TV services work no problem.
StrongVPN L2TP Piracy Tip: download all your torrents files and disconnect VPN while you download.
Also the dialer is a relatively pointless file. Windows and Mac have built in dialers that are simple and easy to use.
I pay $50/year for a VPN service from StrongVPN. Once I connect to that, I can stream Netflix from my iPad to my TV flawlessly. Or you can download the Chrome extension Hola Unblocker and access it for free!
Don't respond to it. Don't click it. Don't do anything with it. Ignore it completely and move on.
Then, pick up a VPN service and have your traffic encrypted.
OR
Get onto a private torrent tracker like IPTorrents or Pretome or Acid-Lounge.
OR
Both. I do both. I use StrongVPN, but some people don't like them because they keep connection logs. I don't care because I encrypt all my traffic with 256 bit AES, but some people care. Just be careful and for the love of god, don't use thepiratesbay or any fucking public tracker with Comcast.
You have 2 more strikes. Be careful.
What does this have to do with Android?
I've used StrongVPN they support both PPTP and L2TP/IPSec. They also support OpenVPN for an additional fee but Android devices won't (and most devices don't work natively with OpenVPN unfortunately).
I found their speeds entirely acceptable; the only even slight annoyance I had with their service is the whole "open a support ticket to cancel" thing (and also the cancellation isn't shown on your account until literally the day of termination).
If you want an extremely good VPN service for quasi-legal* uses (Netflix, Hulu, etc) then I suggest StrongVPN's $55/year package. They are one of the few providers that don't oversell their servers and bandwidth and you will get excellent speeds and great support.
* "Quasi-legal" because using Netflix, Hulu, and other similar services outside the US is against their TOS. StrongVPN is excellent for such uses. However StrongVPN is not the service to use for file sharing, for that you want a seedbox provider such as Feral Hosting.
Cough up their logs to whom? This isn't the U.S. Datenschutz is a big deal.
"Informationelle Selbstbestimmung" is a fundamental right. It's completely a German concept, but there's an English wikipedia article on it:
There's other privacy laws as well, including some EU regulations on the matter. Your ISP isn't going to be able to reveal anything about you without a court order, and you can generally ask them to provide you with all the information they know about you.
If you're worried about things where someone might be interested in pursuing you through legal channels (say, sharing files via torrents), use Tor or a VPN service. I like StrongVPN, but use it just for Netflix and Hulu.
Your packets going in and out could still be sniffed live. You could still be pegged for DCMA violations. The only thing it prevents is law enforcement trying to find you after you've done what it is they are interested in. If the VPN server has no logs then there isn't any way for them to prove it was you on that IP.
I use StrongVPN -- and I have received a few DCMA notices when I first started. Not that it matters where I am but they would cancel my VPN. As long as I keep my torrents on my main connection and don't share on the VPN, it is fine.
No "hacker" worth his salt would trust any paid-for VPN with his anonymity when doing something really illegal (not just sharing movies).
Speaking from experience, most streaming services have figured out how to recognize VPN (including paid ones) use and block you out until you turn it off. This includes CR, Netflix and Amazon. If someone knows of a VPN that can get around this I'd be glad to hear it. For reference, I use StrongVPN and it gets through Netflix but CR and Amazon stop it.
Can you download a VPN app? I use StrongVPN whenever I am in I can watch all my fave shows. It works great. Pretty sure it’s free. Hubby downloaded it for me. Think he got it off the Apple Store.
Try StrongVPN, it's pretty great compared to the other ones I've tried - I regularly get 8MB/s down or faster on torrents, which is crazy fast for a VPN. They don't seem to throttle speeds at all and it's super cheap.
IKEv2 is blocked in China. A lot of the mobile clients prior to 2017 were using it, and it got shutdown. The best bet for connectivity is going to be Tunnelblick and a TCP connection, Tunnelblick allows you to choose which version of OpenSSL or LibreSSL you want to use, which will allow you to bypass the GFW. TCP uses 443 which is the SSL port, so it can't be blocked in China without breaking online banking or online shopping, the best option would be for NordVPN to allow us to set ports (so we could use UDP and send it over 443) and levels of encryption like StrongVPN does.
You should use a VPN, It will solve this problem. But I wouldn't recommend using free VPN's, they are not secure at all. Personally I tried StrongVPN, but wasn't very satisfied with the speed and they do not have many servers, so I recently switched to NordVPN. I'm on free trial right now, so far it looks pretty good.
This is such a stupid move by PIA I can't even describe it, they've lost a customer. Thanks OP for mentioning NordVPN as one of the options, I've just read about it and they seem pretty good and reliable. Currently using the free trial and considering buying the subscription. Snooped around the 'net a bit and found this offer, maybe I'll use it and maybe it'll be useful to someone Also heard that StrongVPN is quite good, will have to try it as well before making the decision.
I use one of the portable modems from Zain and it streams perfectly fine. I watch 4-5 hours of Netflix/Hulu per day (I know, bad, but I've been watching less lately!).
I use StrongVPN. It's a paid service but I think I paid like $60 for a year. It always works, very fast, customer service was quickly responsive and resolved the issue the one time I had to contact them. Also it's very easy to install on your devices. I have it on my iPhone and iPad but I'm sure it's just as simple on windows/android products.
Don't get me wrong PIA is still an awesome service. 5 sim accesses, mobile VPN Client and perm VPN access from a route made me switch from StrongVPN. But when they sell the following service they should cite the lack of support again geolocating:
"UNBLOCK WEBSITES Unrestricted US, UK, NL, CA, Romania, Germany, France, Sweden and Swiss based Internet Services Our VPN services provide unrestricted and uncensored access to the complete internet. If you are blocked by strict censorships by your ISP or firewall, this service will bypass the censorships and firewall, effectively providing you unrestricted access via a United States based IP address. In addition, our Swiss gateways provide the strongest levels of privacy available."
Plus I find many of the UK2Net IPs are tacked as SPAM IPs and so get you get captcha wherever you visit. You don't get these problems on cyberghost. Thus conclusion = victim of its own success.
based on some reading ive done (in case i want to do this myself), i narrowed it down to Unblock-us and StrongVPN
details on how to implement, i haven't got there yet. however, unblock-us seemed to have a ps4 set of instructions
I have TWC like somebody else said in the thread. Every night i have unplayable packet loss, which I found out is due to routing issues that they will not fix. I've had techs come out and look at things and everything is good at my end. The thing that finally fixed it for me is using a VPN. I had to try many different VPN providers to find one that gave me good ping. The one that finally gave me playable ping (45-50 compared to 40-45 on my normal connection when there is no problem) is StrongVPN's Dallas server (I live in San Antonio). Check it out, it's not that expensive and it fixed all my problems for me! You can check if you're experiencing routing issues by using WinMTR to tracert to 192.64.170.1.
I use StrongVPN and I have no problems so far. The only snag is that I can't figure out how to set it up with Apple TV (half because husband's computer is in Japanese and a bit harder to navigate as such, half because I'm not quite the techie I used to be and I don't know wth I'm doing).
>Fuck Astrill >I'm switching providers
Cool. Everybody here always said Astrill was great, so I paid for a year's subscription to Astrill yesterday evening after using StrongVPN for a year and a half (which was great for a month or two, but eventually became almost unusable).
If anybody wants to know what VPNs to avoid in the future, just ask me in a year from now what I plan to use, because it'll become shit as soon as I download it.
Hi. If you want everyone to be connected to a VPN, you can get a VPN service that is installed onto a Wi-Fi router. I have 2 Wi-Fi routers at home. 1 is an ASUS that's connected regularly, without any VPN anything. The other is the Sabai, which is connected to StrongVPN within the router. When someone wants to use the VPN functionality, they only have to connect to the Sabai access point, and they are then on the VPN. Yes, everyone in the house can use the VPN at the same time in this manner.
As someone else pointed out, dd-wrt devices have the ability to accept such VPN services. The Sabai that I got is based on dd-wrt. I got it because (my chosen VPN provider) recommended it. So far, so good.
Hey all, just FYI...
There was some movies downloading on my computer... I really don't know how that happened... someone must have used my computer while I was not looking. Anyhoo...
StrongVPN got a letter from lawyer about my account downloading / uploading "American Snipper" (which, BTW, IMO, is a shit ass propaganda movie which hides the fact that the sniper guy was a bloodthirsty asshole, but anyhoo). StrongVPN stopped my VPN for a day... I had to contact them to get it re-started.
Furthermore, I would like to say... I suspect that a lot of the answers here are bullshit. Even if log-in times / IPs are not written to a file, I'm pretty sure that the various equipment that is used within the organization do log that information... otherwise how would they be able to trouble shoot connection issues?
I use StrongVPN and have been having problems on phone, ipad, and laptop both on 3G and using my China Telecom. Haven't been able to get on yet. Same with my backup VPN, VPNinja. I wonder if there's something going on at the moment. Was traveling all over the city today and there were WAAAYY more cops around than normal. Kind of weird.
PrivateInternetAccess is a consistant favorite across reddit. I don't use them to torrent much, it's mostly for when I'm on the road... but alot of people use it and love it.
I just wouldn't recommend them for gaming since you might be geographically far away from the server. Your download speeds will still max out your connection, but your ping might be a little higher than you might want for a FPS game.
For gaming on a VPN I recommend StrongVPN. They are twice the price (or more) but they have more locations to choose from (Instead of choosing between US East, US Central, etc. you can choose NYC, Baltimore, New Jersey, etc.).
For your uses I think PrivateInternetAccess would work great.
TorrentFreak reviews of most common VPN's:
Some proxy services can actually help alleviates the issues.
Most of these packet loss issues (especially east coast) are coming from over-subscribed transit lines that are fully saturated. Our cheap-ass ISPs and Tier1 providers are refusing to come to resolution over who should be paying upgrade costs.
I'm in Maryland, and I have a strongVPN subscription, and I get packet loss from about 6PM to 10PM like clockwork. I use strongVPN during that time, and have no packet loss and only a slightly higher ping than usual. StrongVPN definitely routes it completely differently - and I use an exit node in CA.
I used StrongVPN. You can buy a router from a third party off their website or flash the new firmware on your own router.
That said, bandwidth can be an issue. I'm lucky to get 2mbps. Depending on what you are doing that might be enough. We can have one person watching Netflix, but usually not two.
There have been a lot of VPN threads in this sub. A quick search will turn up a lot of options.
Yup, worked for me ~90% of the time when I was in China. Here's the IT page to set the VPN up on your computer.
If you're super concerned about encryption and privacy, however, you should sign up for an OpenVPN service. I used StrongVPN which was pretty good.
I use StrongVPN and Game Pass was 200$. I got a deal on StrongVPN so it was about 4$ a month. I can stream at the highest bit rate available when I watch NFL network. You could also use a DNS service like adfreetime, but I already use the VPN for other purposes so this route makes sense for me.
What do you plan on using it for? If it's just for Netflix or Hulu, I recommend trying Hola Unblocker. It's free and extremely easy to switch countries. It's also faster than using a VPN. If you actually need a VPN for other reasons, I can say that StrongVPN works fairly well in Japan, although none of the servers I tried were fast enough for streaming HD content, and you only get a few country switches per month. I used it for about a year before switching to an unblocker.
Most websites that you might use on a regular basis are blocked in China. Definitely purchase a VPN and familiarize yourself with it before going over. I used StrongVPN but there are a myriad of viable options.
If you have a good VPN you should be able to access Usenet just fine.
I will try to find some. I do work for two VPN companies, HostVPN and Marchco, both of which use OpenVPN and constantly have to switch ports etc to avoid TGFC (The Great Firewall of China).
We contacted StrongVPN which said that as they agreed to only market their services to people from outside of China (You cannot buy their services if your IP is within China) at which point China agreed that they would keep their servers unblocked and their ports open.
Currently, StrongVPN is one of the worlds largest VPN providers, so they get to make these deals but anyone else with a smaller company would not get the same treatment.
Seconding StrongVPN for a VPN solution, though I just switched from them to Unblock US. For VPN, which works with all sites, I do agree with the StrongVPN solution.
ya you're probably in for some culture shock then... I use StrongVPN, it's 55 for a year and has worked great. Though don't have it activated when you seed/leach any media. They will cancel or suspend your account. FYI the internet here can be shitty at times but it generally reliable.
There's a lot of free online resources like Memrise and Anki that will help with vocab. Oh you could download Pimsleurs audio mandarin lessons as well. It might be kind of hard to just teach yourself, but i would recommend at least familiarizing yourself with the language. I arrived without any knowlege of Mandarin whatsoever, and after PST I can get by in most day-to-day situations. But the more you know, the better.
Are they any good? I was using StrongVPN to watch US television and whilst it was very good it was quite pricey.
£21 for the year sounds almost too good to be true. Is there some sort of usage cap?
In my experience, yes. I did use StrongVPN for about a year, but it was just kind of a pain to keep it connected all the time. All your traffic goes through their servers, so things are generally slowed down. It also gave me problems sometimes, their software would randomly decide not to often, but it was annoying when it did happen. I heard about Unblock-US back during the Olympics when people wanted to see the BBC streams, but I didn't pay much attention to it. I heard about it again a few weeks ago and took a look. I realized I wasn't needing a US connection for sites beyond those they support anyway (Hulu and Netflix being my primary interests), so I did the one-week free trial. It worked quite well, it's utterly seamless, and it's cheaper than StrongVPN. I haven't experienced any downtime with them yet, either. (I didn't with StrongVPN, but their software was fussy.)
Get a VPN. One you pay for, not a free one, they sell your info. I suggest StrongVPN or similar. If your traffic is encrypted, it's almost impossible for them to know what you are doing. And it's highly unlikely they'll throttle VPN users, as govt. and medical systems are the biggest users.
The main problem is indeed the paying method. Most Chinese people don't have a credit card in the traditional sense and even if they did a transaction to StrongVPN probably wouldn't look all that good.
A lot of people I know use StrongVPN (myself included). I've not heard of or ever had problems with it. It's reasonable at $50/yr or so.
I've set my proxy city to be SanFran & now I can use it to watch Hulu.
On the slightly more pricey side. Once in a while it'll crap out for a few seconds.
Great customer service; very prompt and helps me ASAP. I never wait that long for somebody technical to help me. Most times I can stream Netflix. A lot of my problems come from lack of internet infrastructure.
Your choice depends on what you need to do with the VPN. If you want to encrypt your Internet traffic then choose a VPN provider with Canada servers. They are closer to your location, so they would not slow down your Internet connection. Canada VPN providers here
If you want to unlock US restricted websites you can choose from HideMyAss ($11.52/mo), StrongVPN (about $15/mo) or cheaper services like ibvpn ($4.95/mo for US+CA package). There is also the free, ad supported, service called Hotspot Shield.
I'm also a contractor over here in Japan. I recently decided to play TERA and found out it was IP Blocked in Russia, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. So I got me an account with StrongVPN and it works like a charm. I never get any lag even with the VPN hurting my bandwidth a little, but that's probably because my internet is awesome to begin with. The steps on the website are extremely easy to follow also. I got to thinking about it. I figured I could use the VPN for other things also. Like plugging the VPN into my router and being able to use all my features on my PS3 that are region locked. So using a VPN is not that big a deal and is definitely no hassle.
Damn, I figured the Military would have their own network setup, especially considering how long they have been here. Do they have any problems with you guys using VPNs? I pay $55 of year for my VPN (bought it for ESPN3/Hulu, even more useful now) and I'm happy to be getting more use out of it now. StrongVPN
When I lived in china I used StrongVPN. This was about 2 years ago and back then there was a lot less choice, also the network I was connected to (a university one) blocked PPTP so I had to use OpenVPN, limiting my choice some more. However they were good and everything worked as advertised.
StrongVPN and the speeds are great. They also always have customer support available as far as I can tell, which is nice.
I've posted this in another VPN-related thread already and I don't want to seem like a spammer D: