Astrill as a VPN?

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gmball

564 posts

Ultimate Geek

#87784 7-Aug-2011 09:43

Any recommendations for a VPN provider?

Have looked at Astrill as they offer Australian servers which should be faster, also Strongvpn but no Australian servers..

Have purchased a apple tv, and want access to Hulu so a VPN with a decent connection speed is preferred. Plus with the new 3 strikes law coming into effect in NZ we want to be more vigilant as to who is watching our connection.

Anyone connected thru Astrill via their Australian VPN?

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1819 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#502937 7-Aug-2011 11:13

I didn't like strongVPN as they limit the changes you can make, so you are either in the USA or in the UK and have a limit on changing between the two. So I you want to hear some pandora then watch some bbc you have to do a change.

I have been using the free tunnelbear.com and find it pretty good and might change to the pay version.
They only have UK and USA tunnels.

Still I would like to know of others, would like to tunnel into the Netherlands.

Tradepub

Free professional, reference and technical white papers (affiliate link).

billgates

4704 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#502946 7-Aug-2011 11:45

I use Astrill via US and UK connection and there are no issues. Never tried the Australian connetion as there is nothing there that is hosted on demand that I like.

Do whatever you want to do man.

irangejuice

18 posts

Geek

#503295 8-Aug-2011 12:57

Is it good enough to stream HD content from US/UK?

1080p

1332 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#503301 8-Aug-2011 13:17

Is Hulu available in Australia?

billgates

4704 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#503309 8-Aug-2011 13:23

irangejuice: Is it good enough to stream HD content from US/UK?

Yes. Netflix on HD worked fine. Never tried iPlayer on HD.

Do whatever you want to do man.

irangejuice

18 posts

Geek

#503330 8-Aug-2011 14:05

Hmm might give this a shot then. cheers.

hellonearthisman

1819 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#503493 8-Aug-2011 18:52

I signed up with Astrill, did a google before signing and got a little extra discount.

I'm like Astrill more than TunnelBear.

gmball

564 posts

Ultimate Geek

#503975 9-Aug-2011 17:23

Happy to advise after signing up for Astrill, I am able to max out my Telecom ADSL2 connection with basically every download, 1.9MB/s.

In some respects, I actually think that my connection is faster, or certainly seems that way.

I am connecting via Astrill's Australian VPN Server.

bbunnys

321 posts

Ultimate Geek

#504696 10-Aug-2011 22:11

Might be a dump question but what is best/difference, Open VPN or L2TP. Im running Win 7.

hellonearthisman

1819 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#504958 11-Aug-2011 13:01

I had a small problem of the plug-in play astrill apps exposing me when my connection went down as they currently don't support auto reconnect.

I have found a solution to this by using OpenVPN with astrill servers. Which was simple and auto reconnects.

https://members.astrill.com/knowledgebase/37/OpenVPN---Manual-configuration-with-OpenVPN-client-on-W...

Slingshot seem to limit VPN speeds to 80kBps from 1am, but outside the free data periods they go full speed.
NB that was torrenting and not watching a streaming service (will test if there is a difference tonight).

richms

27957 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#504981 11-Aug-2011 14:01

I have put an invalid default gateway on the downloading machines (virtual and real), and a persistant route for the VPN host to my default gateway, Had to put a bogus default gateway otherwise openVPN wasnt creating a new default gateway after connection. Only have routed the IP that my seedbox is on to the default gateway, so no risk of leakage when it is down.

Unfortunately my seedbox only allows one VPN established on my account at one time. Im going to try one connection from each of my connections tonight and see if its a limit on source IP or something.

Richard rich.ms

sti2envy

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#505530 12-Aug-2011 14:09

I'm using vpnv6.com to max out my downloads every night. I actually feel safe using a VPN now..and ready for Sept

Also watching lots of hulu and netflix with their US server. Their US server ping time from my Slingshot is pretty decent 200ms so streaming is very smooth.

bbunnys

321 posts

Ultimate Geek

#505943 13-Aug-2011 11:24

I see Astrill now have a New Zealand server. I presume that will be best one to connect to for everyday stuff as should be fastest?

hellonearthisman

1819 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#506014 13-Aug-2011 15:57

Via Astrill:
Pinging geekzone.co.nz [202.175.128.164] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 202.175.128.164: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=120
Reply from 202.175.128.164: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=120
Reply from 202.175.128.164: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=120
Reply from 202.175.128.164: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=120

Ping statistics for 202.175.128.164:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 35ms, Maximum = 47ms, Average = 39ms

Via Slingshot:
Pinging geekzone.co.nz [202.175.128.164] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 202.175.128.164: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=121
Reply from 202.175.128.164: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=121
Reply from 202.175.128.164: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=121
Reply from 202.175.128.164: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=121

Ping statistics for 202.175.128.164:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 31ms, Maximum = 33ms, Average = 32ms

The NZ connection doesn't support torrents.

tigercorp

667 posts

Ultimate Geek

#513244 28-Aug-2011 23:46

hellonearthisman: I had a small problem of the plug-in play astrill apps exposing me when my connection went down as they currently don't support auto reconnect.

I have found a solution to this by using OpenVPN with astrill servers. Which was simple and auto reconnects.

https://members.astrill.com/knowledgebase/37/OpenVPN---Manual-configuration-with-OpenVPN-client-on-W...

...

Just stumbled across this thread so thought I'd add to it...

The current Astrill (2.5) version supports auto-reconnects.
Also, there's this handy tutorial on how to tie a port specific app to the vpn. They use uTorrent in the example. If you do that and add a (Windows) firewall rule to block that port, then you can guarantee no exposure on your local IP.

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