I’m just looking to run a private VPN for myself and up to 10 family members
Hi there, I had a quick question! I am looking for a VPN solution for up to 10 family members who all use streaming devices. Here in Canada lately even just watching torrents result in warning letters from ISPs, and they are actively censoring IPTV services in a bid to bleed their population dry with overpriced media packages.
I was first looking at the big providers like Mullvad for a VPN deal but a lot of these services are 5+ Euro per month and also come with strict device limits, sometimes as little as 5 connections. A friend on Discord said I should consider looking at getting a VPS and making my own VPN, which has now lead me here. I have enough previous knowledge that I can configure a WireGuard daemon and the configuration files, but I guess my main question is, can I accomplish what I am looking to do with a simple budget VPS?
Some of these Black Friday deals appear to be under $20 a year, and advertise 2TB bandwidth a month which I don’t think would be exceeded - people are typically streaming non high bitrate live TV with the odd torrent video here or there. And surely not 24/7…
Is there any pitfalls or problems I need to be aware of, or is this a sound and much more frugal solution than paying big VPN providers? Is there some TOS against media streaming or anything I should know, or running a VPN for up to 5+ people?
Big thanks for any advice, great forums and website you guys have here, I have been here 5+ years ago and glad to see it’s still alive and well
Cheers from Toronto
Comments
Without any further measures taken, if you self-host your VPN on a vps and the vps ip leaks through torrenting or whatnot, you/your family are the only ones using it, so, naturally, it's easy to track down to you ("hey provider, who rents this ip, here's a court order?"). Using a VPN Provider, you'll share the same ip with other users who you don't even know, so it's more anonymous in that way. VPN providers also usually promise they won't keep any identificable logs. Whether that's true is usually not easy to know. Mullvad and IVPN have earned the communities' trust, but Mullvad took measures against torrenting iirc (no more port forwarding). OVPN is also popular and defended clients in court. Personally I use Keepsolid, Ivacy and Windscribe, but I don't torrent so..
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
If streaming is the only use case, buy RealDebrid and Setup Stremio+Torrentio
Why?
Appreciate that, for simple viewing torrent movies and not even running a seed box or anything is that actually a common thing?! Do they get court orders for identifying users doing simple media consumption?! I thought unsecured ISP users are easy targets, not actual VPS or VPN big hosts.. and wouldn’t this be solved by simply picking a pirate friendly region for the VPS somewhere in Europe?
Stremio and Torrentio are indeed the app I’m commenting on as we speak, great job! However those are precisely what lead to letters from the ISP saying your IP has been reported for torrenting
Get a seedbox from providers who ignore DMCA like ultra or feral.
https://lowendbox.com/blog/black-friday-kvm-vps-ryzen-nvme-vps-and-more-by-racknerd-starting-from-10-18-year-spin-the-wheel-of-savings-for-extra-savings/
It says this place has 2.5TB bandwidth and an Amsterdam location, keeping in mind torrenting is secondary and not very frequent the main use is IPTV privacy, any reason this wouldn’t work ?
Nobody is seeding though full time, it’s just using Stremio which utilizes torrents to watch in real time, I am not looking to seed anything full time, mostly for streaming and the torrenting is a rarer secondary function .. is that still needed? Sounds more expensive than Mullvad or IVPN at that point too
Trying to delete, sorry, double post
You want to stay away from Racknerd if you decide to go this route.
The all seeing eye sees everything...
Oh, shoot, ok! Thanks for the heads up, I thought Amsterdam would mean it’s free from bothersome requests like that
I use & recommend Windscribe.
Decent client (and leak protection), and a decent service, at a, you've guessed it, decent price.
I think it's easier to set up and use than bothering with a VPS for a VPN for both you and your family members.
My Windscribe review
Relja of House Novović, the First of His Name, King of the Plains, the Breaker of Chains, WirMach Wolves pack member
BikeGremlin's web-hosting reviews
Right, so stremio + torrentio + debrid would be the solution.
Stremio isn't IPTV though, so it's not really the solution.
@snow
As has been said, the issue with running a VPN yourself is that your deets could be handed over to the authorities on request. Same applies to a VPN provider potentially, so you need to weigh up how paranoid you are versus how much you want to pay.
If you want to roll your own, and remain as anonymous as you can, your best bet would be a provider who doesn't ask for personal details and lets you pay via crypto - one such provider would be Incognet (https://incognet.io), run by a well-known community member @MannDude. Their smallest VPS is $15/quarter, less if you have a longer term.
The BF deals you're seeing are mostly going to require personal information, will either want a credit card or PayPal so will have access to information that can identify you. Mileage will vary on whether a provider ignores or complies with copyright requests, but you shouldn't have any expectations of a provider dealing with any grief on your behalf for $20/year.