VPN, port forwarding, and speeding up transfers

Given that it is often said that having the ability to get incoming connections (ports open) is a very important part of speeding up your torrenting, I'm finding it odd there is not more discussion regarding port forwarding and VPN. I'm thinking maybe I'm just a VPN newb and not understanding the process. I finally gave up looking for info regarding proxy and port forwarding when I realized a proxy is just one way ...lol. Boy that was a time consuming and unrewarding google search.

If I am using a VPN client software on one machine, will port forwarding speed up my torrenting, or does the VPN and client software direct incoming connections adequately?

I currently have privateinternetaccess and airvpn, and both allow port forwarding, but I get awful speeds with airvpn and PIA only has far away servers for port forwarding which again means bad speeds. I haven't ran across any other VPNs that have port forwarding.

Also a question regarding encryption with VPN? As long as my IP is hidden I don't see a point with encryption. Shouldn't I just turn it off to speed up transfers?

If all you care about is hiding your IP, why not just run a SOCKS5 proxy? You used to be able to do that with a PIA subscription. Or go buy a cheap VPS and forward through that.

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Originally Posted by piercerseth

If all you care about is hiding your IP, why not just run a SOCKS5 proxy? You used to be able to do that with a PIA subscription. Or go buy a cheap VPS and forward through that.

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thanks,

I was thinking that at some point and then I wasn't because I thought that a proxy would limit incoming connections and thought a VPN configured right could receive incoming connections better. Despite me spending hours researching this, I think I know enough to only be confused :-(


PIA does have a proxy and so far it has provided the fastest speed for me anonymously. I was just thinking I could improve on that by improving incoming connections, but maybe I can't or it's optimized good enough already.

Despite me telling myself that the smartest thing to do was to torrent without a VPN and get the best speeds and only switch to a VPN or seedbox IF I receive a DMCA notice, I decided to try out a few VPNs that have port forwarding. I tried out PIA, AirVPN, iVPN, Mullvad, & VyprVPN. All have port forwarding which is important for establishing incoming connections with a P2P sharing program.

My results from US west coast (yours may certainly vary)

VyprVPN: Fastest and the one I am most pleased with and will probably keep. However they keep logs and will serve a DMCA notice, so in some ways, what is the point, but since their speeds to the Netherlands is excellent putting my torrenting exit point in the Netherlands certainly keeps the DMCA notices away. You can port forward with this service by removing the vpn NAT and then forward any port just like you would do if you didn't have a VPN service.

Mullvad: Next fastest but speed seemed sporadic, but at times they where as fast as my top pick. They have one US server on the east coast. They don't keep logs.

iVPN: They don't allow port forwarding on US servers and Toronto wasn't that fast and I couldn't get good speeds on any non-US server which allow port forwarding. Their non-forwarded US servers were fast though.

AirVPN: I wanted this service to work because they gave lots of options, but I couldn't get good speeds from my location. If I remember right, you forward the port through the web control panel.

PIA Private Internet access: Good inexpensive VPN, but I just couldn't get the speeds. They only have port forwarding on a few servers, none in the US.

So for now if I'm not in a hurry I'll torrent with VyprVPN with my exit point in the Netherlands, and if I'm in a hurry I'll torrent with no VPN at all. I would say VyprVPN takes no more than 1/3rd off my speed in the Netherlands and around 1/10th in the US, but I can get a DMCA notice using a USA server.

Anyway those are my results, which could be vastly different depending on your location.

Update:

VyprVpn has seemed to have slowed down in regards to torrents. On heavily seeded torrents I get 6MBs without a VPN and use to get 4MBs with using VyprVPN on the well seeded stuff. It's now crawled down to 1MBs on the heavily seeded stuff. Regretted coming back to update a dead post, but I don't like giving them credit that is no longer due.

I am no expert in VPN's and VPN pricing but saying that...

Why not just get a 1gb or 100mb unlimited seedbox? They are pretty cheap and you can transfer from torrentland to home via encrypted ftp with ease and at your max speed. $15 gets you a 1gb speed box with 400gb HD and unlimited bw and the 100mb stuff is even cheaper at around $5.

I thought about it, but trying to keep my expenses down. I also am working at "cutting the cord" and a VPN works good at seeing content I couldn't normally see, so it has dual use. Even with the VPN speed bottleneck, I'm getting OK speeds now. It's just the network performance nerd in me that's finding it entertaining trying to max this stuff out.


BTW: Something I found out. There appears to be no need to port forward with torrenting on a VPN where you can remove the VPN NAT and are not sharing an IP address, since you are tunneling all traffic through your router with the VPN software. At least that's my assessment at the moment. On VPNs where you share an IP, you would still need to port forward if you want optimal p2p client performance.

Bumping this thread as I'm looking for something which would allow me to by pass my ISP as its blocking some trackers I tried Feral VPN as i have seedbox works well but would be giving away that , so wanted to know whats the best solution to bypass tracker blocking with max speed

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Originally Posted by absent_today

...so wanted to know whats the best solution to bypass tracker blocking with max speed

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VPN or seedbox depending on what you need and what level of cash to performance you can afford.

Is this the pubic tracker blocking in the UK? It is usually just the search pages and not the actual tracker. TOR browser is enough. Most of the pubic sites have alt addresses that are not banned, or have alt proxies that take literally ten seconds on google to find.

I dont want TOR and its private tracker and that too some of them which is being blocked i dont want seedbox , anyone tried SSH Tunneling how is the performance ?

Over here they have blocked some private trackers not all and public trackers are open infact on popular torrents on kickass peering is enabled by ISP