Springtime!

[Teunis]

Ah spring is in the air!
I came home from a lengthy trip and found this little beauty sticking out of the ground between the side walk and my garden.



There's a fiber cable growing!

It had been promissed for February but it'll now be May before the little thing has reacched into my basement.

And then 50/50 internet with a private VPN server at home

[SteveRiley]

There's a fiber cable growing! ... And then 50/50 internet with a private VPN server at home

They're running fiber to the home and giving you a measly 50/50? You could do better with LTE. Do they have plans to raise the bandwidth eventually to, say, this?



A VPN at home is very nice. I use it whenever I need to connect to public wi-fi.

[Teunis]

Yeah I agree about the speed but it's all I need.
The options are thus:

You'll no doubt be able to filter the relevant data out of the Dutch text
This includes 'Internet Mobile Mini', a SIM card with 250MB data per month.
As we have net neutrality I can also use it for my SIP phone.

I've just been at the neighbour's to test the VPN that's build in to my Fritz!Box modem/router but so far no connection.

[SteveRiley]

Hm. Only 20 more euros for ten times the speed? I'd say go for it I was on Comcast before the switch, at 100 Mpbs. I've noticed a distinct improvement after the switch even for seemingly simple things like web browsing. Pages load instantly, essentially. Also, remember what happens when you run a VPN at home:

remote device -> home server -> fetch Internet content -> home server -> back out over Internet -> remote device

You're doubling the amount of traffic that your home server has to see. You'll be cutting your throughput in half. If you intend to use the VPN extensively, 50 Mbps will feel turtle-ish. BTW, which VPN server do you plan to use? I'm running OpenVPN, works great.

[Teunis]

This Fritz!Box has a build in Cisco compliant VPN.
So on the W520 I've set up networkmanager's vpnc mode.

Although it's (of course) running Linux they (again of course) only supply a Windows client to set it up.
Lately their blog has given out enough info so Mac and Linux users can construct a configuration file that can be easily uploaded to the modem.

vpncfg {
    connections {
        enabled = yes;
        conn_type = conntype_user;
        name = "Group name";
        always_renew = no;
        reject_not_encrypted = no;
        dont_filter_netbios = yes;
        localip = 0.0.0.0;
        local_virtualip = 0.0.0.0;
        remoteip = 0.0.0.0;
        remote_virtualip = 192.168.178.201;
        remoteid {
            key_id = "Group name";
        }
        mode = phase1_mode_aggressive;
        phase1ss = "all/all/all";
        keytype = connkeytype_pre_shared;
        key = "28 character secret";
        cert_do_server_auth = no;
        use_nat_t = yes;
        use_xauth = yes;
        xauth {
            valid = yes;
            username = "My username";
            passwd = "My private pswd";
        }
        use_cfgmode = yes;
        phase2localid {
            ipnet {
                ipaddr = 0.0.0.0;
                mask = 0.0.0.0;
            }
        }
        phase2remoteid {
            ipaddr = 192.168.178.201;
        }
        phase2ss = "esp-all-all/ah-none/comp-all/no-pfs";
        accesslist = "permit ip 192.168.178.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.178.201 255.255.255.255",
                     "permit ip any 192.168.178.201 255.255.255.255";
    }
    ike_forward_rules = "udp 0.0.0.0:500 0.0.0.0:500",
                        "udp 0.0.0.0:4500 0.0.0.0:4500";
}]

Still not working...

Presently I'm not very worried about the speed, most hotels supply the bottleneck (for a fee)
Strange thing is, the best hotel connections I've seen were on a no charge WIFI!

Tomorrow Brazil.

[Teunis]

Hehe, I just arrived in Rio and when the VPN is switched on whatismyip.com shows my home address

Now a little stroll along the Copacabana beach.