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Self-hosted VPNs can be quite good if you are hosting them from a hosting service, but network traffic is often limited to about 1 TB (and you have to count it both ways) and many streaming services will still detect it as a VPN connection and maybe block it.

Hosting from home solves the network traffic issue, but exposes your home IP address.

So this is a good article to understand where and how a self-hosted VPN may help you or not. In many cases, especially for Netflix and similar types of streaming, the only reliable option is a paid VPN service that specifically works around streaming services.

See How to make your own self-hosted VPN in under 30 minutes

#technology #VPN #selfhosting #privacy



Perfect if you don't trust any of the usual providers
alto

@gadgeteer valid points though you're only focusing on the use case of circumventing stream service region restrictions. If you consider things like staying in a hotel and connecting to their wifi, then it's also a really good idea to have a VPN to your home to avoid any traffic sniffing on that network. Same on flights and other public spaces. I also use my home VPN on public 4g networks to prevent Google from tracking my IP address and correlating that to locations etc.

@alto no not only focussing on streaming. That was just a typical example that many get wrong. As I said, it does depend on an individual's actual use case they want it for. The actual linked article does a nice job of summarising some key pro's and con's irrespective of what it is used for.

But yes hotels, airports, flights, cafes, etc are good reasons for their use. I used to love sitting and scanning those WiFi networks and used to find hundreds of connected devices with all sorts of identifying info being given out. Any VPN in these scenarios would be good to use, and pretty essential actually.