Server for Finland

[xairv 6]

Torguard as I can remember exactly using Creanova as an Finland location. But performance-speeds was not so cool, maybe at least for me, because I'm beyond of Russia. Ping, yes, was good, like with sweden's Teknikbyran I have in AirVPN. 

 

I don't understand from where you were connecting? Creanova is convenient for the European part of Russia, especially Moscow and further north. Also for Russian people in Estonia and Latvia who use a lot of Russian resources (VK, Yandex, etc.).

[Sascha 4]

I just added more current examples of country blocking to Blocked websites warning here

https://airvpn.org/topic/16839-httpareenaylefitv/

[xairv 6]

Adding some statistics to the case for a server in Finland:

 

Finland's population is quite small, but a server in Helsinki would also be ideal for the 13.5 million people in St. Petersburg and its surrounding regions. Adding to that Finland's population of 5.5 million would give a population of 19 million in the coverage area for that server.

 

In comparison, AirVPN already has 4 servers in Latvia and 3 in Lithuania... 7 servers for countries that have a combined have a population of only 5 million.

[zhang888 1066]

7 servers for countries that have a combined have a population of only 5 million

 

The servers are not placed based on population count, and never will be.

India and China has the biggest population count but are the worst possible exit locations, for example.

 

Servers are placed in Neutral datacenters in strategically good places - for example places that can cover

connectivity from the entire region with effective peering and lowest latency as possible. Of course price matters

as well, but usually countries with developed internet infrastructure have lower prices too (competitive market).

[xairv 6]

 

7 servers for countries that have a combined have a population of only 5 million

 

The servers are not placed based on population count, and never will be.

India and China has the biggest population count but are the worst possible exit locations, for example.

 

Servers are placed in Neutral datacenters in strategically good places - for example places that can cover

connectivity from the entire region with effective peering and lowest latency as possible. Of course price matters

as well, but usually countries with developed internet infrastructure have lower prices too (competitive market).

 

I'm aware of that, but earlier you mentioned that Helsinki was not a good location due to its latency to the rest of Europe. Well, it does in fact offer very low latency for people in Russian and Finland who tend to use local resources. For us there currently aren't any good options with AirVPN. Finns can't use local geoblocked resources and Russians have to connect to Sweden to access Russian resources, which involves ~14ms from St. Petersburg to Uppsala and then often ~26ms to servers in Moscow or ~14ms to St. Petersburg.

 

AirVPN already has plenty of servers in niche markets like Latvia, Lithuania. I fail to see how those servers are a strategic advantage. Maybe it appears that way from a Europe-centric view, i.e. low latency to Germany/NL/UK, but we don't use European resources... we use our own Russian and Finnish ones.

 

Who uses those AirVPN servers in the Baltics? Finns? Russians? Wouldn't it be strategically wiser to serve those users (and there are potentially many of them) from a better location?

[xairv 6]

Now that I think about it, Lithuania may be useful for those in Belarus. Latvia is still a mystery to me; I don't understand which region (other than Latvia itself) those servers useful for. There are very few users on the Latvian servers, although I see they are generating quite a lot of traffic. Who knows?

[S.O.A. 83]

A server in Finland would be great!

 

Regarding the speed of the original poster. Go to the AirVPN select "Preferences"->"Advanced"->"TCP/UDP socket send/receive buffers". Set both of the send and receive to 256kb. If you have a high speed line this will greatly improve your speeds. It has worked for myself as well as other AirVPN members who have high speed lines and slow speed issues. Hope this solves your speed issue! 

[xairv 6]

I hope I'm not posting too much in this thread. I wanted to point out how unique Russia in terms of traffic. We tend to use our own sites rather than Google & Facebook as other Europeans do.

 

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/RU

 

Summary:

 

1 Yandex.ru (Russian 'Google' - search,email,video,photos,news,etc.)

2 Google.ru

3 Vk.com (main social network in Russia)

4 Youtube.com

5 Mail.ru (email/news/photos)

6 Google.com

7 Ok.ru (social network, popular with older generations)

8 Avito.ru (classified advertisements like eBay)

9 Wikipedia.org

10 Facebook.com

 

In most European countries the top three is Google-Youtube-Facebook

Yahoo, Live.com, and Amazon are not even in the top 20 in Russia. Facebook barely makes the top 10 as there are two social networks more popular than it.

 

Eg.:

Germany - http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/DE

France - http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/FR

Sweden - http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/SE

Poland - http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/PL

 

Why is this relevant? I'm showing that latency to Germany, Netherlands, etc. is not the most important factor for Russian users. The top 8 sites are either Russian or served from Google's datacentre in Finland. In terms of traffic, I think it should be viewed as a separate region like North America and Asia are.

[zhang888 1066]

I still don't really understand why the extra 20-30ms in latency makes the services you describe unusable, or less

usable in any way. When you use web services, the latency below 100ms cannot be even noticed by a human.

The only thing I would agree on are VOIP/gaming/trading where latency can be critical, but not Yandex/VK.

[xairv 6]

Then why have servers in Latvia? What purpose do they serve? As you wrote earlier: "I would welcome a server with Creanova as well but not at the expense of other technically better locations."  Where are those technically better locations, if you don't mind me asking?

For whom is Latvia technically better? You have four servers there which, as far as I can see, are not of much use to anyone outside Latvia itself. Meanwhile those in Finland and Central/Northern Russia (quite a large market combined) are not well served. RETN and other backbones SPB-Helsinki are better than those to Stockholm.

 

20-30ms adds up for those in other parts of Russia which are 50ms or more from St. Petersburg to begin with. You earlier mentioned that latency to other parts of the EU isn't good from Creanova, but how is that relevant for Russian and Finnish clients? IMO it's a euro-centric view that doesn't make a lot of sense from our perspective. I only pointed out the traffic profile in response to your comment about connections to other parts of the EU. Google built a large datacentre in Finland, right on the Russian border, for a reason...

 

As for me, I would like to be able to make calls via Hangouts, VK, etc. without that unnecessary delay. It's important also for SaaS/hosted applications where VNC is used.

[Staff 9972]

Then why have servers in Latvia? What purpose do they serve?

 

They serve the purpose of AirVPN mission and meet our technical requirements.

 

Kind regards

[xairv 6]

 

Then why have servers in Latvia? What purpose do they serve?

 

They serve the purpose of AirVPN mission and meet our technical requirements.

 

Kind regards

 

Thanks. Are you able to provide any comments about the possibility of a server in Finland?

[Staff 9972]

Thanks. Are you able to provide any comments about the possibility of a server in Finland?

 

Our plans explicitly exclude any new server until September, except for emergency cases. As usual various countries, including Finland, will be re-considered every 3 months, or even more frequently, according to variations of user-base and connection preferences in available countries. In the latest plans VPN servers in Finland were explicitly excluded because we did not need them.

 

Kind regards

[xairv 6]

 

Thanks. Are you able to provide any comments about the possibility of a server in Finland?

 

Our plans explicitly exclude any new server until September, except for emergency cases. As usual various countries, including Finland, will be re-considered every 3 months, or even more frequently, according to variations of user-base and connection preferences in available countries. In the latest plans VPN servers in Finland were explicitly excluded because we did not need them.

 

Kind regards

 

Makes sense. So as I understand, there is not demand for it from existing clients. Please also consider the potential of new users. I would like to use AirVPN but the closes servers (in Uppsala) are not really ideal for me connecting from Russia. Obviously the Finnish users are in need of a routing server or a node as well.

 

September is not far away in any case. I don't think anyone expects things to happen instantly, given that servers have to be purchased, travel to Finland, installed, etc.

 

Grazie ancora.

[LZ1 672]

Hello !

 

@xairv

I just want to politely remind you and anyone else who might be reading this nice discussion, that zhang, despite the moniker "Staff", is not an AirVPN employee and so does not speak on behalf of AirVPN officially. It's more like "Volunteer Staff" or "Forum Staff" (quoting Staff account). Only the Staff account, which now replied already, is the official voice of AirVPN . Just to be clear, as it could sound like you were making efforts to persuade Zhang, when it's not him who's in charge .

 

I'd love more servers personally. But not at the expense of the quality that Air is known to maintain. I think you make some good points though. How about getting Air to support grassroots organisations instead, like the EFF and others, which fight for our digital rights, so that they can help change the legal landscape in the various countries around the world? Then we'd get more servers too, surely .

 

Sent to you from me with datalove

[xairv 6]

Thanks, LZ1. You are right, I did think that Zhang888 was speaking on behalf of AirVPN.

Basically, I see a lot of potential for AirVPN to help Russians with the recent changes here - PrivateInternetAccess shutdown and new data surveillance laws. Many people in Russia are looking for solutions at the moment, so I decided to give as much information as possible from a Russian perspective. Hopefully it will help in future decisions about server/network planning. I'm not Russian by the way, but I live in Russia.

 

I would love to help a campaign to change the law, but unfortunately it's dangerous to do that here. Trying can get you sent to prison or even shot. I do donate to the EFF each year, though.

 

Thanks also for your fantastic guides. I'm reading through them at the moment.

[altae 22]

I fail to see the benefit of Finnish servers for Russians. If I look at the map Finnland is not really closer to areas like Moscow than Latvia or Lithuania are. Ok, that might not apply to Saint Petersburg but to almost anything further south. Plus there are also servers in the Ukraine which far closer to Moscow for example than anything located on Finnish territory. Not that I'm against Finnish servers but the "Russian argument" does not really apply here I think. What exactly is it that you have against Latvian or Ukrainian servers?

[xairv 6]

I fail to see the benefit of Finnish servers for Russians. If I look at the map Finnland is not really closer to areas like Moscow than Latvia or Lithuania are. Ok, that might not apply to Saint Petersburg but to almost anything further south. Plus there are also servers in the Ukraine which far closer to Moscow for example than anything located on Finnish territory. Not that I'm against Finnish servers but the "Russian argument" does not really apply here I think. What exactly is it that you have against Latvian or Ukrainian servers?

 

Geographic distance is rarely ever directly related to throughput and latency. Most servers in Finland and even Sweden are actually closer (in milliseconds) to Moscow than any of the three locations that you listed.

 

It's also important to consider the location of whatever it is that the user is connecting to... Russians don't connect to many resources hosted in the Ukraine, Latvia, or Lithuania. Helsinki is at least close, in network terms, to Google (in Hamina), Stockholm, St. Petersburg (VK, Yandex) and also closer to Moscow than the existing servers. I.e. it has advantages that existing locations don't match.

[LZ1 672]

Thanks, LZ1. You are right, I did think that Zhang888 was speaking on behalf of AirVPN.

 

Basically, I see a lot of potential for AirVPN to help Russians with the recent changes here - PrivateInternetAccess shutdown and new data surveillance laws. Many people in Russia are looking for solutions at the moment, so I decided to give as much information as possible from a Russian perspective. Hopefully it will help in future decisions about server/network planning. I'm not Russian by the way, but I live in Russia.

 

I would love to help a campaign to change the law, but unfortunately it's dangerous to do that here. Trying can get you sent to prison or even shot. I do donate to the EFF each year, though.

 

Thanks also for your fantastic guides. I'm reading through them at the moment.

Of course of course, I get you. I think we all see a lot of potential for Air, haha. I think it's excellent that you chose to share your thoughts, ideas and enthusiasm in such a constructive way. Air will most definitely consider your proposal. Especially after a couple of months when they re-visit the subject I think. It's just that there should be reasons, in line with Airs mission, for setting up a server. Air isn't quite the kind of VPN that would set up a server just for x content to be available for y people.

 

There's a topic called "Poor Pia" in the off-topic forum that you might be interested in reading, in regards to the Russian situation.

 

Thank you for the compliment. I hope they'll be useful for you!

 

Sent to you from me with datalove

[NecroKatze 1]

 

I fail to see the benefit of Finnish servers for Russians. If I look at the map Finnland is not really closer to areas like Moscow than Latvia or Lithuania are. Ok, that might not apply to Saint Petersburg but to almost anything further south. Plus there are also servers in the Ukraine which far closer to Moscow for example than anything located on Finnish territory. Not that I'm against Finnish servers but the "Russian argument" does not really apply here I think. What exactly is it that you have against Latvian or Ukrainian servers?

 

Geographic distance is rarely ever directly related to throughput and latency. Most servers in Finland and even Sweden are actually closer (in milliseconds) to Moscow than any of the three locations that you listed.

 

It's also important to consider the location of whatever it is that the user is connecting to... Russians don't connect to many resources hosted in the Ukraine, Latvia, or Lithuania. Helsinki is at least close, in network terms, to Google (in Hamina), Stockholm, St. Petersburg (VK, Yandex) and also closer to Moscow than the existing servers. I.e. it has advantages that existing locations don't match.

You are indeed right. I'm not sure how true this is nowadays - but a lot of the Russian international traffic is(at least was) indeed routed through Finland and then through Sweden. Skipping the extra route to Sweden would indeed help at least a little bit.

[Sascha 4]

You are indeed right. I'm not sure how true this is nowadays - but a lot of the Russian international traffic is(at least was) indeed routed through Finland and then through Sweden. Skipping the extra route to Sweden would indeed help at least a little bit.

 

For what it's worth, I think Sweden has closer ties to US spy agencies than Finland. My understanding is also that it is one of the reasons a cable is now being drawn between Finland and Germany. In order to bypass Sweden and their FRA agency.

 

My main reason for starting this topic, however, was that I would like to watch Finnish national TV without disconnecting from the VPN. Whether this for technical reasons actually requires a server in Finland, I do not know. But thank you all for your interest in the topic, whatever the reason. Cпасибо! Kiitos! Tack!

[NecroKatze 1]

 

You are indeed right. I'm not sure how true this is nowadays - but a lot of the Russian international traffic is(at least was) indeed routed through Finland and then through Sweden. Skipping the extra route to Sweden would indeed help at least a little bit.

 

For what it's worth, I think Sweden has closer ties to US spy agencies than Finland. My understanding is also that it is one of the reasons a cable is now being drawn between Finland and Germany. In order to bypass Sweden and their FRA agency.

 

My main reason for starting this topic, however, was that I would like to watch Finnish national TV without disconnecting from the VPN. Whether this for technical reasons actually requires a server in Finland, I do not know. But thank you all for your interest in the topic, whatever the reason. Cпасибо! Kiitos! Tack!

You are absolutely right. The basis of the so called FRA-law in Sweden was that they are only allowed to spy on foreign traffic, not domestic. That is not the case anymore though as far as i have understood it. So if one would like to avoid the Swedish "NSA" - do not use Swedish servers.

 

If i'm not mistaken that is why they wrote the law that way from the beginning - in order to be able to spy on Russian traffic. Now they just spy on everybody instead.

[xairv 6]

Thanks guys. I wasn't aware of those legal aspects - one more reason to avoid Sweden if possible. I guess I should have suspected it, given their treatment of Assange and Sunde's cases.