cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/969323

I am looking to buy a VPN subscription, and im interested in getting one that allows port forwarding. Found a few that still allows this, including pure VPN and air VPN which seem to offer good value for money, at least on the the long term plans. Any feedback on these two?

I used to have nordvpn, and used it for 3 years, and once that subscription ran out, have been using mullvad so far. Performance wise mullvad hasnt disappointed me or anything, but now im looking to find one that allows port forwarding.

I also have a doubt regarding the whole port forwarding thing, does the VPN having this feature enable to do it even if my ISP doesnt allow port forwarding? From the videos and articles I read, VPN port forwarding is just something you do inside their native apps and such, so if the ISP hasnt enabled port forwarding for me (which I know it hasnt, because tried to get jellyfin working the other day, and couldnt get the ports to open even after setting everything up in my router), will I still be able to do it? I tried searching around with this query, but didnt really find anything.

  • ChickenBoo@lemmy.jnks.xyzEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    The VPN is basically a tunnel outside your whole network, so the port is forwarded via said tunnel to the device the VPN is active on, completely bypassing your ISP and routers port forwarding capabilities.

    I use Private Internet Access with port forwarding and have never had a problem.

  • swrdghcnqstdr@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I was going to link you to Mullvad’s port forwarding guide but it looks like they removed that feature just this year

    • phx@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, apparently Jul1. Guess I won’t be renewing my subscription

  • kava@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I use airVPN and I’ve been very pleased with it. Can also pay month to month, as I only use it to torrent. I don’t use port forwarding. My question is - can you use a VPS for what you need?

    • svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I am not very knowledgable about vps and how that could be something I can use. To be frank, I dont have any particular need for a VPN other than torrenting and bypassing geographical restriction in a general way. The jellyfin experiment was to just be able to share my media across the web, so that people I know can access my media, music, mostly. Even the selection of a VPN isnt that urgent as I have a shared seedbox with seedbox.eu so that I can download torrents safely. Since I have been using a VPN for some years now, I thought id keep one handy, and when I was reading up about port forwarding, I thought maybe that could be useful, for jellyfin and such.

      • kava@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Look into a VPS. I use a few to host web apps & apis for personal/business use. You can use it as a server to host media files to yourself. And since you have full access to the OS, you can do whatever port forwarding you like.

        Plus they’re super cheap. I pay like $4 a month for the cheapest and $15 a month for the most expensive. The cheapest is like only 750mb RAM… but for simple things you don’t need much at all

        • svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          That is something I would like to look into in the future, but since you are knowledgeable with regards to VPS, can I ask you why the RAM figures are more important than the storage figures, in the few services I checked out, and the example you gave, the RAM value is what is prominently mentioned, if the purpose is to store media and such, doesnt the storage capacity take precedence, like in a seedbox?

          • Shrek@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            I also host VPS for lots of things. However, I don’t think that’s what you want here. I think you are really looking for two separate things. VPN for torrenting and bypassing geographic restrictions. Spot on. Go with a cheap VPN that allows torrenting and have fun.

            Now, you want to do the media sharing thing with Jellyfin. Using a commercial VPN doesn’t help here. It’s only protecting you from giving your IP address to people you share Jellyfin with. But, if you trust them to share a service from your local network, you should probably trust them with your IP. Puting it on a VPN still leaves your Jellyfin exposed on the open internet where anyone can try to break in. It’s just not your local IP. Does that make sense?

            Because of the above, I would say to port forward on your home internet instead. However, I don’t suggest this either! Even if you are super knowledgeable, it’s best to not expose anything to the internet unless you have to. Jellyfin is pretty safe, but the best thing would be to use you want a VPN. So, I am a little confusing haha! Separate to the commercial VPN in the first part, you should setup a VPN where your network is the private network. I would highly suggest Wireguard. You can do all the setup and it’s a little overwhelming. Or you can try Tailscale which uses Wireguard but it does all of the configuration for you. It is a paid product but for your needs I highly doubt you would fall out of the free plan.

            https://www.ethanmad.com/post/jellyfin_remote_access/

            You don’t need to do the reverse proxy part of that either btw.

            https://tailscale.com/kb/1084/sharing

            That’ll show you how to share with family/friends

            • svotay@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Thats really helpful, I think I am going to try this out. The whole VPN and port forwarding feature I was curious about happened because my ISP doesnt allow port forwarding and I was unable to set it up for sharing my jellyfin. I will try to read the link you shared and try what I can do! Thanks a lot!