First Impressions new user

[intonate 3]

First impressions as a new user.

 

1. AirVPN using the Eddie client - simple enough to get running for me to recommend to first time users.

 

2. CLI configurable and as granular as any seasoned expert could want.

 

3. The involved user base and community really is an asset.

 

Thank you AirVPN.

 

I should have made the move to you long ago.

[serenacat 83]

Also 4. for me is AirVPN staff, assets, finances etc in the European Union, rather than the USA, or somewhere dodgy like Panama, and under EU privacy etc legal jurisdiction. As an issue of politics and principle, and support for US citizens vs the corporation oligarchs.

[intonate 3]

Also 4. for me is AirVPN staff, assets, finances etc in the European Union, rather than the USA, or somewhere dodgy like Panama, and under EU privacy etc legal jurisdiction. As an issue of politics and principle, and support for US citizens vs the corporation oligarchs.

 

as well, good points serenacat... thx...

[Camponotus 2]

I try it in english.

Now 1 activated 1 month for testing for this VPN Service. (The price is good in comparison and you have port forwarding!)

My previous service doesnt work anymore with the combination of port forwarding and the gateway where all connections going through to my 10.xx ip. Emule thinks aggressive beahvoiur comes from the gateway IP. All connections attempts result in this strange situation, because now all emules have the same IP, but different Nicks, IDs ect. Result: my emule banns everything (even with deactivated anti leecher funcktions ect, massive connections attempts via the same IP are enough). The only info i could get is that this problem cant be solved with a different mod or options within emule. This NAT problem is really rare as some modders have reported. It worked for several months though, until it seems the networksetup from the vpnservice was changed/upgraded. BitTorrent behaviour didnt change at all.

Privacy ect wasnt my first priority. My home network has 2 raspberry Pis with PI hole (and Deluge with for example the free raspian images to support distribution) running against ads and bad connections (over 4,500,000 entries on blocklist) + browser with anti add/script addon. But my problem is, that my ISP assign only IPv6, the IPv4 is tunneld. With this, a lot of old programs arent running anymore. And port forwarding is impossible for those old ipv4 services.

So, now i have found airvpn with port forwarding and it works. But i have to admit, i had trouble and needed the whole day. The Eddie Software ist way better than the clients from other services. I am not really into these things and dont know about a lot of functions and features.  Port forwarding and connectivity was number 1. After this works almost fine (i think i have closed ports for ports which i cant change in torrent or emule like 6969 for example; but i dont know how important these are. All NAT and port tests are fine for TCP and UPD in my clients at home. Of course i noticed the difference in the first minute). The IP and interface binding in torrent and emule works until now every time, so it seems my 10.xx Ip is static and doesnt change. Torrent would notice it, because its bind to the eth and would take the new 10.xx. IP. On the other hand, emule needs the IP manually added in the extra options. Altough the option " filter server and lan ip" have to be off.

With that  solved, now i am interested in the security and privacy features. In Eddie are functions i cant guess which option is good on some points. More information in the client for beginners would be good. The Network Lock with  the correct setting isnt so clear to me at the moment. I "think" its working. With that and other options, i want my system as private and secure as possible, as long as the P2P works. I am aware, that i lose benefits with at least 4 open ports.

But i think i have reached a lot with airvpn already. I can use the software again     On top, it seems iam safe with webrtc and dns leaks ect. IPv6 makes an error and is deactived and blocked automatically, but i dont need it. To come to an end, i have to test and read more the next days, but its cool how it is already.

Speed: upload is 100% and download goes around 13-15mbits (400mbit untiymedia over the old TV cable) on my locked server from sweden. I tried a lot and some, were faster, but thats not my need. Stable upload and low ms for playing (iam from germany, middle west. still good ms)

If my tests are positive over 1 week, i am sure, that i will prolong more time. Why? Airvpn is the only service where i can use Emule with High ID (KAD and if you want to use a server too) and Torrent with a real green NAT test (torrent programs often misinterpret an incoming connection and show "all ok", but in reality, the tracker told how the other client can find you.) I spend quite some money for other services and not all have a money back option. Even the time for searching^^

PS: The port forwarding section on the webpage is not so friendly for people like me. I needed a lot of new ports and deletes until i noticed, that my software had to run, than use the check funtion on the page to get the green light. As i stated earlier, would need forwarded ports for static ports (which i cant change in the emule/torrent software)

Edited ... by Camponotus

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

On 5/23/2019 at 6:18 PM, Camponotus said:

Speed: upload is 100% and download goes around 13-15mbits (400mbit untiymedia over the old TV cable) on my locked server from sweden. I tried a lot and some, were faster, but thats not my need. Stable upload and low ms for playing (iam from germany, middle west. still good ms)

Hah. It's the other way around for me. Could download for two hours straight with 45 MiB/s a week ago, but the upload throughput gets knocked down to 2 MiB/s except in the middle of the night. I'm with Vodafone Kabel DE. Can't wait to move out of here and subscribe to Telekom again, just like years ago. Best experience I've had with a German ISP and OpenVPN so far.
 

On 5/23/2019 at 6:18 PM, Camponotus said:

with a real green NAT test (torrent programs often misinterpret an incoming connection and show "all ok", but in reality, the tracker told how the other client can find you.)

Sorry, I don't seem to understand this. An incoming connection is an incoming connection, no matter if made with or without the help of a tracker. How would you tell apart a "real" test from a "false" test, may I ask?

And about the port forwarding: If a port is taken, sorry. You can always forward a random port to the internal eMule port, but I think eMule clients only ever connect to the default one.

Edit: I never got throttled in the first place! My HDD was set to an I/O scheduler for flash and SSDs which produced a very high read and write latency, effectively resulting in drastic performance breaks after a few minutes (as more torrents went active), and exactly the symptoms I was seeing all those months and year. Edited ... by giganerd
Not throttled by ISP

[Camponotus 2]

Hi giganerd,

i reached 17megabyte now(thats way enough for me) . Upload is what my line with 20mbit should reach. Only one VPN service was faster in download with around 30megabyte. Unitymedia is not my favorite, i would go back to telekom too.

I try explain with the port thing(its very difficult in english for me and only what i had observed): I had green "NAT OK" on the down bar even with 0 opened ports on VPN or without. Its impossible, that NAT could be ok without ipv6 on torrent. In torrent, as far as i know, you can change TCP and UDP (standart 6881 and 6882), but there are 6969 (tracker communication) and 6880 for internal reserved (dont know exactly for what), which cant be changed. As long as the first are open, it seems to work perfectly even with closed 6880 and 6969.

I think and could be wrong, but as you statet, an incoming connection is an incoming connection, so the testbar statet "OK" as long the torrent tracker shares the information in combination with peer exchange active. Thats my opinion, but if only DHT is active and the torrent file is private without tracker ect, only DHT, it should be "not OK". The test tool section in biglybt (or vuze/azureus) on the left down shows ok, but the test tool over the options help section "NAT Firewall Test"  doesnt give a success for TCP or UDP (timeout), but it shows "OK" on the down bar in the program.

Maybe Torrent is a bad example, because its working most of the time enough. Even the bad speed shouldnt be related often to port problems. Other examples are a lot of games which are using the bittorrent system for installation and updates like battle.net and wargaming. In these Gameclients there arent options for ports and firewalls or if there are, most people never touch them and so they are wrong configurated. But they are working with http download source and p2p (you can see active upload).

For Emule there are standart TCP 4661 and UDP 4665 which could be changed. In addition there are tcp 4662,udp 4672 and tcp 4711 (webinterface) for other parts. These couldnt be changed.
So, Emule ist ipv4 only. I used the ports from airvpn and entered them into emule for TCP and UDP (instead of the standart 4661 and 4665). All ok and High ID with KAD and Emule. Even with the other. It seems, that the extra ports arent needed so much, but i added them in the port forwarding from airvpn. KAD/ED2K arent working at all without ipv4, but with closed ports (low ID) and so without incoming connections. Even the peer exchange doesnt seem to work.

I hope you can understand this^^   In short: Torrent download always works, but with open ports, you get way more sources in a shorter time. Torrent Upload after software restart shouldnt be working, because you are the seeder and waiting for incoming connections. The tracker tells the downloader that you are a seed, but they cant connect to you.
Even with closed Ports you can get high download speeds, as long as you are connected with enough seeds with free uplaod for you.  Emule cant do much without a server. KAD (low id) needs at least a ed2k server (low id  is enough) to get a contact which acts as a kad buddy and helps your client to even reach someone later. The ED2K server are limited in known files and sources, so without KAD on the other hand, your client is on an island with a handfull sources without a chance to get to know new.

Sorry for the messy comment, but its really hard for me to write this in english. If this wasnt so technically, google translation could help a bit.

Edited ... by Camponotus

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

18 hours ago, Camponotus said:

In torrent, as far as i know, you can change TCP and UDP (standart 6881 and 6882), but there are 6969 (tracker communication) and 6880 for internal reserved (dont know exactly for what), which cant be changed.

This is not entirely true, it depends on the client. qBittorrent for example lets you change the listen port and the port of the internal retracker (which is useless in Germany, anyway). The default tracker port of softwares like OpenTracker is indeed 6969, but you will find the majority of HTTP trackers in the wild all listening on 80. It wouldn't matter, anyway, because this is an outbound connection for which a port doesn't need to be open explicitly.
What I read between the lines a bit is that you are used to EMule which inevitably needed its fixed ports open to work. With BitTorrent you can use any port.
 

18 hours ago, Camponotus said:

Thats my opinion, but if only DHT is active and the torrent file is private without tracker ect, only DHT, it should be "not OK".

This is not entirely right. DHT does not do anything with your connection. In simple, it's there to find peers in a swarm who have a certain file and exchange info about them. If your client is found via DHT, the ones who wanted to find you for example get info about your IP and port so that they can connect (= direct, incoming connection).
 

18 hours ago, Camponotus said:

The test tool section in biglybt (or vuze/azureus) on the left down shows ok, but the test tool over the options help section "NAT Firewall Test"  doesnt give a success for TCP or UDP (timeout), but it shows "OK" on the down bar in the program.

Can't speak for any of the clients.
 

18 hours ago, Camponotus said:

Torrent Upload after software restart shouldnt be working, because you are the seeder and waiting for incoming connections.

That's an interesting thing to look up. Maybe some clients connect to peers themselves and ask if they need help? qBittorrent doesn't for sure. But from a programmer's perspective working on a more or less commercial BT client which may follow the standard but implements some features of its own on top, I'd say it's not that far fetched. Vuze is such a thing. This applies to when you're a seed.
If you're a peer, you are making the connections. This might be the reason why you can download despite the communication port being closed.