Starting out with pfSense and OpenVPN
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So, I have tried a couple VPN providers so far. Tried ExpressVPN, but the speed felt slow (at most 50Mbps aout of 112Mbps possible) and when connected to the "fastest" Los Angles server Google suddenly felt like I was in hong kong. Odd, did not feel right. Also, their DNS kept having issues. I thought it was something on my side, so I have spent a day playing with various DNS options for no luck. Finally, I almost gave up in defeat, when I wondered how do other VPN providers do it. So, I played around with a couple (still trying to figure out where to put the switch to go between multiple providers).
Finally, I am trying out PureVPN. During the day, I was seeing speeds close to 80Mbps, far better than what I was seeing at ExpressVPN. However testing now 9:30 pm PST speed is more like 30Mbps. So, that's about 70% loss from what I normally get without VPN (112Mbps, paying for 100Mbps).
So, what is the problem? I have monitored the CPU on my Firewall (The Vault by Protectli it's very nice) and it barely touched .30 on a QUAD Core Celeron. Are there just no VPN providers with seriously uber capacity? Is this the state of Open VPN where providers are dropping one or two boxes at a POA?
Anyhow, I am paying for 100Mbps, and it seems silly to lose that to VPN overhead. So, what are the other options? IPSEC? Is that no longer secure enough?
I have done just some wonderful strangeness with pfBlockerNG in actually first canceling Netflix, getting scorned by my family and finding a way to route all Netflix traffic over to the WAN bypassing the OpenVPN port and renewing the Netflix account an hour later. That was very cool and I am still trying to figure out how it works. Thanks, everyone and https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/4lcfdf/netflix_to_wan_not_opt1vpn/d3mgta4/
But, what I want to do, is somehow configure multiple remote hosts and "Release/Aquire" external IP on regular basis between different VPN servers. It would be cool if such a system could narrow down to top 100 servers over some period of time. Then predict usage patterns on those servers from accumulated history in order to switch to empty spots in real time. Is there a way to set this up with pfSense?
Thanks,
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Commercial VPNs provide pipes for lots of simultaneous users. Their gigabit connection might give you 5Mb if a boatload of users are on the same connection at the same time. Later on, you might get many multiples of that faster.
StackSocial offers a lot of lifetime VPNs for relative pocket change. Through them, the cost is very low. Take a look. I purchased two since they were so low priced.