What is a VPN? Lets talk about VPNs and why you should have one
What is a VPN? Lets talk about VPNs and why you should have one
2015-09-14
if I look anything like I feel in fact I
look like complete and utter crap right
now don't I let's go ahead and fix that
all right I am a lot more presentable
now at least I think okay so today's
topic obviously is about VPNs and I'm
going to tell you why everybody
connected to the Internet
needs a VPN and everything get to
yourself right now well I don't need a
VPN I'm not connected to the Internet
well you're a big fat liar because
you're watching this video right now on
the Internet and if you're not well damn
that's Talent or you're in the room or
something alright so if V P n stands for
a virtual private network and it does
exactly what it sounds like it does it
keeps your connection private encrypted
and anonymous but there's a lot of
different uses to a VPN and you might be
thinking as a regular user of the
Internet why do I need a VPN well I'm
going to tell you today at least in this
video a couple of different scenarios of
why you might want a VPN and we're going
to also do a little demo of a VPN
service that I'm using completely
unsolicited completely they have no idea
I'm doing this this is not an affiliate
thing this is not a sponsorship this is
just me having spent a lot of money in
the last week trying out a lot of
different VPNs and then going with the
best one so I've kind of done a lot of
the research for you and maybe it'll
help you guys in the long run so that's
why I decided to do this video plus on
Twitter a lot of you wanted to know more
about the VPN service I'm using so I
figured we go ahead and do it official
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learn more so when I worked in IT we had
a physical VPN setup through Cisco where
we had physical hardware with a built-in
VPN and firewall and proxy so I'll admit
I haven't had to use a service like this
in the last 10 years because I'd access
to a physical one that we controlled
that wasn't something I subscribed to so
it all works the same way but as a
subscriber to a VPN service you're
connecting to a server that you pay for
whereas I was used to connecting to a
server which we owned in control but
since I don't work there anymore I don't
have access to that VPN now if you peons
do a few things they mask your IP so
your real IP your ISP provided IP is not
seen by the Internet which makes it
harder for things like DDoS and hacking
and and you know whatever else people
would do with that IP secondly it tricks
the internet into fooling your
geolocation which tells the Internet
you're connecting from a physical data
center or ISP location and so you can
fool the Internet into thinking you're
anywhere in the world where VPN is
accessible via your service the other
thing it does is it completely encrypts
your data which makes it much harder to
hack into your your internet or your
computer or your connection when the
data is encrypted and multiple levels of
encryption now you might be thinking I'm
not a streamer no one's going to DDoS me
why do I need a VPN well it also tricks
the internet into thinking you're
connecting from somewhere else if you're
in Germany you've more than likely sent
me a message or been unable to connect
to YouTube to watch our Tech Talk live
stream on thursdays because for whatever
reason germany is very strict on
allowing live stream access into the
country so if you are connected to a VPN
that was outside of germany then you
bypass that geolocation lock and you're
able to watch live streams and videos
and whatever else it may be now another
reason that VPNs are actually very very
important is your ISP will monitor the
data that you are sending to and from
the data center and will throttle your
connection in a lot of cases based on
what you're connecting to we all know
that there was some big fiasco with
Verizon and
Comcast and other companies that were
slowing down connections to Netflix and
YouTube at Amazon and Hulu companies
that sell streaming services eat up a
lot of data so the ISPs don't like that
so they will monitor the traffic going
to and from your router and if they see
that you're going to a high bandwidth
service like Netflix then they slow down
your connection you ever been watching a
live stream on Netflix and all of a
sudden it pops up and says Netflix speed
has changed reconfiguring your stream
and next thing you know you're watching
a standard def instead of a high-def
stream more than likely your ISP just
throttled you but if you were on a VPN
the ISP cannot monitor that traffic
going to and from your router because it
sees one constant stream of encrypted
data and cannot throttle you so you
could find that a VPN gives you better
internet access and better streaming
performance because of the fact that the
ISP has no freaking idea what you're
doing
alright so let's go ahead and turn
around I'm going to give you a
demonstration of how VPN works because
one of the problems with VPN services is
you never know how fast it's going to be
because when you're encrypting that data
stream going back and forth to the
server your speed is going to slow down
because of the equip ssin happening on
your end and then the decryption
happening on the other end and then the
Rhian krypton happening on the other end
sent back to you and being decrypted
again so that slows down your connection
a little bit and increases your ping by
how much well let's go and turn around
and take a look
alright so the service I'm going to be
showing you today is called astral STR I
ll and this was actually recommended to
me by Barnacle E's somebody I really
trust when it comes to networking he
knows way more than I do but it's
pronounced astral kind of like an ass in
front of your nostril you can actually
choose the different type of encryption
you want to use right here so you've got
open web which is kind of like a browser
base you've got open VPN is what we're
going to be using here today when you
open up the astral service and you log
in you can see all the different servers
that you have access to right here you
can see is quite a few of them offline
but we've got South Africa I could
connect to Melbourne I'll be a fun one
to do a speed test on now each one of
these servers also has their own dynamic
IP range so you're not going to get the
same IP every single time just like your
ISP it's going to release and renew
those IPs which is what's going to keep
your VPN worth having at least if you're
trying to mask your IP which is one of
the major reasons why I'm doing this now
I've gone ahead and turned off the VPN
because we want to do a speed test for
before and after the encryption so we
can see how much speed we're losing you
are going to lose speed by connecting to
a VPN tunnel but how much speed you lose
is really going to be dependent on how
strong the servers are how many people
are connected to the servers your
distance from the server the nodes and
access points between you and the server
so there's a lot of different things
involved here now we're going to go
ahead and run a speed test before and
after as you can see down here it shows
time warner cable as i showed and we are
going to go ahead and do a begin test
and we will we'll come back with those
results all right the results are in
we've got a 12 millisecond paying a very
consistent 354 Mbps connection and an
upload speed of 24 point 11 so let's go
ahead and connect to the VPN here in san
francisco and that's not actually that
close to me I'm in Los Angeles it might
actually show LA here on the connection
but that's fine so let's go ahead and
reload the page now be reloading the
page with the VPN on you can see that
our traffic is now coming from the 209
IP so we're connecting to San Francisco
we're gonna connect to an LA server via
San Francisco so my traffic is going to
go from where I am up to San Francisco
and back and we'll see how that actually
does all right so while connected to the
veep
PNR ping jumped up quite considerably a
hundred extra milliseconds that wouldn't
be desired for say gaming but if you
were doing encrypted data transfer this
wouldn't be a big deal we lost about 90
megabits you can see we had some
fluctuation in there and we only lost
two megabits up of about 90 down that's
actually very respectable there were
some services that I connected to like
let's see here
IP vanish terrible service never go to
ipvanish I actually dropped all the way
down to 10 megabits per second 10 that
was absolutely unacceptable so I need to
get a refund from them so let's go and
connect to one that's closer though
because honestly you would want to
connect it to one that's near you unless
you were doing the geolocation thing I
changed my mind we're going to go ahead
and connect to New York because we want
to see how the connection across the
country is so we'll do a New York speed
test here all right we're connected to
New York will refresh the speed test and
it's going to show a different location
now you can see now we have a different
well it still says 209 the rest of the
numbers are different you just have to
trust me on that but we are connected to
New York you can see the geolocation now
shows that that's where we are so let's
go ahead and do a speed test in Newark
now so once again the ping is sitting
just over a hundred 113 millisecond ping
connection speed is looking fantastic
here at 235 232 bets very very very
acceptable the up as you can see is
hardly affected I mean I wouldn't call
that affected at all from the San
Francisco test so as you can see
Astral's doing a fantastic job of
keeping this service very very fast all
right so for the last test we're gonna
go ahead and connect to Los Angeles so
we'll be connecting to a nearby VPN
doing a speed test at a nearby location
so let's go ahead and see how well this
works so once again you can see the IP
change so now you've seen the benefits
of a VPN now obviously our speeds are
very very similar to the San Francisco
connection but look at this look at the
ping this is what matters if you're
gaming on the VPN this ping is pretty
damn good it was what only of what four
points for a milliseconds higher than
without the VPN and the upload is again
fairly unaffected so you guys can see
now why VPNs with a fast service are
important
and everybody needs one trust me so
there you have it I took Barnett Clee
suggestion and tried out a stroll and I
have to say it is by far the fastest
service I've tried out yet now tried out
quite a few others ipvanish cyberghost
private Internet access the Viper and
just to name a few and this was by far
the fastest consistently I've been using
this for several days now I haven't
noticed any random disconnects any
slowdowns no problems connecting to any
servers Skype calls no problem
whatsoever so I highly recommend going
over to a stroll and checking them out I
have no affiliate code or anything
that's just my suggestion now one of the
cool things about most VPN services is
you don't have to run them on a client
level if you have a router that will
actually allow you to plug in VPN
information or if you have a router
that's flashable to something like
dd-wrt which is a custom firmware then
you can plug in the VPN information into
the router where any traffic going
through the router is then tunneled
through that VPN it's a little bit takes
a little bit longer and a little bit
more time to change the VPN you have to
log into your router and change your
reboot your router and all that stuff
but then again if you have a lot of
machines that you were worried about
actually connecting to the internet and
hiding your IP then you can go ahead and
do it at a router level at a router
level that's hard to say you go ahead
and do it in front of them you can go
and do it at the router level as well
alright guys so that's my video here
about VPNs and why you should use one
why it's smart to use one and I hope
it's helped you guys learn something
also too you guys can actually help out
in this video because I know a lot of
you are using VPN services now if you're
using a VPN service that you subscribe
to the Astral's like six dollars a month
or something silly like that if you buy
a year you get an even better discount
so for six bucks a month protecting your
information is it's stupid not to so if
you're using a VPN service won't you
help each other out by doing this tell
everybody what service you have tell
everybody what your unencrypted vpr
download speed and upload speed is and
then what your encrypted download speed
and upload speed is so people can an
idea of what the VPN service speeds are
actually like all right we're gonna get
out of here I have talked and said way
too many words and things sure there's
only a few of you still watching this
video so to the six of you who stayed
all the way to the end I love you guys
the rest of you well you're not going to
hear this anyway but I will see you guys
in the next video of course thanks for
watching
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