
Problems that forced me to leave ProtonVPN for Mullvad - kevinhq
https://kevinhq.com/problems-that-forced-me-to-leave-protonvpn-for-mullvad/
======
alistproducer2
I guess it depends on what you're using your VPN for, but I prefer to run my
own VPN on a vps. I use vultr and pay $5/mo. I also get to host a collabra
server for my nextcloud setup on the same server so it just makes economic
sense to use a vps rather than paying $5/mo (or more) to just get a VPN and
also not have control of my data.

~~~
heyoni
Are you guys vpn’ing on your phones too? Do you just use the built in vpn
connection profiles? I’m having trouble getting mine to stay connected to a
plain old IPSec tunnel running on my raspberry pi and thinking I probably need
a special client for “always on” to work.

~~~
Scramblejams
On iOS the only way I found for “always on” to work well was with the IKE
protocol using the built-in VPN client. I set up a cheap Vultr VM and used
this:

[https://github.com/jawj/IKEv2-setup](https://github.com/jawj/IKEv2-setup)

One caveat: Reconnects worked poorly until I disabled the iptables rate
limiting the script imposes.

Outside of that, it’s worked really well. I pointed the VM’s DNS at Adguard so
I get some good filtering as part of it.

~~~
heyoni
I'm trying wireguard at the moment for the always on feature. Setup was
absurdly easy.

~~~
Scramblejams
Cool. When I set my VPN up, Wireguard didn’t do iOS yet, but I’m interested in
it. Please post back to this thread with a short experience report, if you
wouldn’t mind. :-)

~~~
heyoni
So far it's been really good. It's very good at staying on all the time and it
was really easy to setup. Right now it's running on a raspberry pi but since I
took down my ipsec vpn container, my ram/temp/cpu usage has gone down quite a
bit.

I still need to spend a minute configuring things like dynamic dns in case my
IP changes but I'm really impressed right now.

~~~
Scramblejams
Thanks! Just ordered an Rpi4 for home routing duties, I’ll give it a try there
first.

~~~
heyoni
Btw, I also highly recommend a case cooling case for the rpi4. I got the
aluminum one at [https://flirc.tv](https://flirc.tv) but I think anything like
it will do. It dropped the idle temperature by quite a bit. I think it went
from ~75ish to about 45

~~~
Scramblejams
Good call. Those are pretty cases.

I saw some tests indicating open+fan really dropped temps vs closed+fan so I
ordered one of these:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXSMY1N](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXSMY1N)

~~~
heyoni
I'd be curious to see what the idle temperatures land on.

------
badrabbit
It's just openvpn. If you dislike their app,use vanilla openvpn!

As far as instability..yeah it's unstable on the free version because you only
get to access highly saturated free access servers.

With the paid plan on proton I see disconnects every othet day or so (random
servers).

I use the free tier as well but I have it automated to where I force a
reconnect if destinations are unreachable.

I believe proton uses Nord's infrastructure to some capacity?

But yeah,not fair at all to compare a free plan with a paid one. Even if they
charge 1€/mo,those users are supporting the servers they use. With free,it's
unlimited number of users that saturate a free server so you should expect
less quality.

~~~
roboys
Care to share your force reconnect script? I'm sure many would appreciate it.

~~~
badrabbit
I don't wish to associate this HN account with my github profile. But I think
it makes a good project to help you learn a new language.

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SkyMarshal
Flagging this. The VPN industry is full of companies competing against each
other using underhanded social media tactics, astroturfing, bots, sock
puppets, etc.

This is clearly one of them, just a shill for Mullvad by a likely astroturfing
or affiliate blogger who is "not an expert in VPN".

There is zero reason why this should be on the HN frontpage.

------
lettergram
I used the visionary plan from ProtonVPN and ProtonMail. I personally have
found it exceedingly good. I still augment it with my own VPN (easy enough to
setup). I do experience slowdowns at peak times, but I also tend to break
30Mb/s speeds - can’t complain

------
DavideNL
> I feel it’s getting slower and slower

> I am not sure if the problem is on ProtonVPN side or my ISP side

I may be missing something... but I feel this is a terrible article, not based
on any facts/solid research, but based on random experiences caused by "who
knows what".

~~~
SkyMarshal
You're correct, it's an uninformative article by a non-expert just shilling
for Mullvad. Just flag it and ignore.

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Forellen
I don't use ProtonVPN, but damn... The author starts off his article with "I
feel (sic!) it’s getting slower and slower.". Well, what do you mean? Can't
you measure the speeds? Are we supposed to take your word for it? Even if he
is right about protonVPN getting slower, that's no way of starting off an
article...

On the second paragraph the author writes "Not only slower, but it also keeps
disconnecting".. So, the author is sure that protonVPN is actually getting
slower... But I thought he said he simply _felt_ like it was getting slower.
Feelings are now equivalent to certainty, apparently.

Overall, not a good article, I'm sorry to say.

~~~
SkyMarshal
You're correct, and probably getting downvoted by bots or Mullvad voting
rings. Just flag the article and move on.

------
jsgo
NordVPN has seemingly slowed down as of late too. Though there are so many
nodes that who knows what’s going on and how prevalent.

Previously when connected, my line would go down to 50+ Mbps: perfectly
reasonable. Now, I test and it is sub 2 Mbps.

------
kmfrk
It's weird how, as popular as VPNs are, competing on UX - and not just some
cute mascotts and assets - is still not a huge priority.

There's always trade-offs to be made for now it seems. And Mullvad doesn't
have mobile support yet.

Makes you wonder what's gonna happen when Cloudflare's Warp is out of closed
beta.

~~~
hendersoon
Back in the day, every videocard manufacturer released their own drivers.
Diamond, Canopus, BFG, etc, they all took the baseline GPU drivers and added
their custom branding. This meant that after Nvidia released a new driver, it
could take weeks before Diamond put it up on their website. You missed out on
bugfixes and optimizations for new games. So everybody just used Nvidia's
drivers, and eventually all the various companies stopped doing it entirely.

Mobile VPN apps are in the same spot. They all use the same backends; OpenVPN,
IKEv2, and/or Wireguard. Everybody's time would be best spent making _those_
apps better. The OpenVPN iOS app has a particularly poor UX.

~~~
01CGAT
For example on iOS you use the iOS NEVPNManager API for setting up an IKEv2
VPN connection, if this is updated in an iOS release and you use it in your
VPN app, your app will be "updated" too. So in this sense it's not comparable
with videocard drivers from back in the day.

~~~
hendersoon
That's true, IKEv2 is natively supported. OpenVPN and wireguard aren't, and
most of the paid services use OpenVPN right now.

------
fulafel
Is anyone else bothered by the appropriation of the vpn term for setviced
providing access to the public Web without confidentiality? There should be a
new name for this.

------
StavrosK
Can I ask VPN users here what you use it for? I've personally never found a
good use case...

~~~
Insanity
In the past I used it for torrenting. Nowadays because it adds a layer of
privacy from companies and governments. I trust my government now but I don't
have to trust my future government. I am pretty sure I don't do anything
illegally, but a future government might not think so.

Like in the UK when they wanted to ban porn (I think?). Something harmless
today (legally speaking) can become an issue in the future.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
Are we sure VPNs don't log / turn logs over to federal authority figures if
pressed?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Empirically, PIA has no logs to give (per multiple warrants now).

------
nickpsecurity
I know people on it on Linux. They said it was pretty fast. They haven't
griped about it any. It's possible the user's ISP or the Proton client
software is causing it. It also might depend on which servers they use given
more outages might happen in specific parts of the world vs others.

------
shitgoose
following statement on ProtonVPN web site may give a clue:

Free Package "Speed: Medium"

------
ikeboy
PIA doesn't work with Google search on some nodes anymore.

~~~
Insanity
If you use it for privacy, might as well use DDG instead of Google to add
another layer :p

~~~
ikeboy
I use it for privacy for other stuff, but use it system wide so it screws up
my regular searches that I don't need that level of privacy for.

