Regarding mullvad

piracysails@lemm.ee to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 38 points –

Hello all,

I am running fedora with mullvad (wireguard) straight from the network settings with a configuration file.

According to https://mullvad.net/en/check everything is fine but I want to know if I am set for torrenting now that they have removed port forwarding and I cannot bind qbittorrent to the vpn.

Should I adjust anything or am I set? What was the benefit of port forwarding?

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It's unfortunate that the other users are ignoring your actual question... You should still be able to bind qbittorrent to the wireguard interface, and you definitely MUST do so in order to make sure you're safe (if the VPN drops, you don't want it to fall back on your normal connection). If you aren't sure what the wireguard interface is names, try running ip a before and after activating the VPN connection and compare them.

Port forwarding allows other users to connect directly to your torrent client. Without it, it's much more difficult for you to connect to other people who aren't port forwarded (though not impossible if there's a third, mutually connected client who can facilitate initiating the connection). Things will generally still work without it, but youll connect to fewer people, so it might be slower. And if you're downloading rare torrents, you might have to be patient and wait for someone else to join and facilitate the connection

One benefit of port forwarding is that torrents work properly when it's configured. You may be able to download some things without it, but not as many things will be accessible, you can't seed anything, and your ratios will suck.

That's not the only thing I use it for, but the lack of port forwarding was why I left mullvad.

Any suggestions?

I checked out IVPN but apparently they disabled that feature as well.

Is proton the only well regarded vpn that still supports it?

azirevpn.com is the one I'm on at the moment. Dunno if it's well-regarded but it seems good enough for my purposes. As well as Proton there's also Airvpn. If all you need it for is torrents then getting a seedbox is another option.

Private Internet Access still has it

Edit: People got issues with PIA? I've been using it for years and it works brilliantly while still being one of the cheapest on the market.

They're owned by a sketchy company. Worth looking into, but the general advice is to stay far and wide away from Kape Technologies.

I remember the purchase a few years back but PIA was still proven to not keep logs and be just as secure, no?

Might be the case, and most probably true. But not a risk I'm taking, also not giving that company my money.

I use PIA, and have for years as well. My only complaint is they semi-promised they'd have a WireGuard config file available years ago, and we're still waiting.

But as long as you can run their client, you can utilize WG, and it's still the cheapest option that offers no logs, split tunneling, port forwarding.

I personally use Gluetun to bind my qbit instance with ProtonVPN, works wonders 🌻

This is what I do as well and it's been working great for me.

AirVPN

Ditched mullvad as well when they dropped forwarding. Air has a lot of Canadian servers which is nice if you are in the Americas

Recently set this up myself in Ubuntu with the Mullvad app. I noticed in the qBittorrent settings that you have to tell it which ip to use. Mine was set to "any" so I had a quick look at the IP address of Mullvad and selected that one in the drop down

You don't need a forwarded port for torrenting you just will be only able to connect to peers with an open port.

I mean, why not use a seedbox?

Benefits and drawbacks?

You don't need to fiddle with VPN, have a machine up all day that don't cost you electricity, usually more bandwidth, and potentially downsize your home internet plan.

Drawbacks include more limited storage, paid extra, and the need to download to local.

Just to note that seedbox only works if you just view the material for a few times, not hoarding. IMHO as long as you maintain a share ratio of 2 or above you're good to delete the file after you done with it, unless you're on PT.

Thank you for the info.

And I forgot: keep you being DMCA'd by your ISP because your VPN drops momentarily.