VPN company for WiFi security?

[WyomingKnott]

Has anyone used a good company that provides a VPN connection to the Internet when you are using WiFi? The idea is not to put anything unencrypted onto the WiFi network, which is easily monitored.

OTOH, you are now routing all of your traffic through the VPN company, with no proof that they themselves are not malicious.

 

[bill001g]

I have always been suspect of the free vpn sites but they work good when my main goal is to get past county based restrictions.

You best bet would be to setup your own VPN service and make everything appear to come from your house. OPENVPN works well and if you have a large enough router you can load dd-wrt with the openvpn feature and run it directly rather than having to have a server.

 

[WyomingKnott]

I had been wondering about the benefit of running my own (free, not giving them all my traffic) versus having more speed if the pipe to the VPN is bigger. I'll look into openvpn. And try to find out what dd-wrt is.

I looked up dd-wrt. Since my sense of humor can't be stopped, isn't it Router Rooter? If I can do that without breaking my net service, and I can put it back the way it was in case I need service from my ISP, I'll try it.

 

[WyomingKnott]

I'm not getting this - do I install dd-wrt on my ISP's router instead of the OS it came with, or grab one of my old routers out of the attic and install it to that, then connect it to my ISP router?

 

[bill001g]

I would put it on the old router for practice. You can brick the router if you don't follow the instructions.

Never thought about using a second router as my vpn box I loaded it on the main router to avoid the issue of port forwarding.

I am going to guess if you are leasing a router it does not support dd-wrt.

On top of that not every router has enough memory to load the version of dd-wrt that has the openvpn in it.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Best answer selected by WyomingKnott.