Hello comrades! In light of the fucked up state of the UK govt I’m looking at some VPN options to further harden my homelab.

Right now, I have zero VPN coverage for my seedbox/jellyfin server which of course means a major security hole, even if my ISP hasn’t shit over me for it yet.

I had a few questions about selfhosting a VPN versus a third party service.

  1. How does a self hosted VPN actually do anything? I was under the impression that VPNs had to be off-site to give the benefits of, say, location spoofing.

  2. Do I need to pay any subscriptions to other services for a self hosted VPN? At least in order to access features such as location spoofing.

  3. We use Cloudflare WARP at work to access internal services. Will a LAN-VPN Fuck this up even if I explicitly avoid spoofing my location to ensure my IT guy doesnt shit a brick?

thanks cumrades!

    • aanes_appreciator [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      I have a homelab that I could host the VPN on and route traffic through there? Unless the principle is different to how, say, PiHole works?

      Does a VPS have its own issues since it would be tied to my banking info should I use it to bypass a government censor? Or are we suggesting:

      LAN -> VPS -> VPN -> WAN

      Yes ideally I want all network users on that VPN. How would a cheap VPS handle data streaming? I have 500mbps down so I imagine a VPS could be a massive bottleneck unless I pay £££

      EDIT: ah looks like there are generally affordable VPS (£8/mo) that offer a good speed.

      • FuckyWucky [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        1 month ago

        Melbicom has gigabit servers I think. If it’s close enough you could get full speed.

        Europe in general you can find cheap gigabit vps. It’s Asia where transit is v expensive.

        Does a VPS have its own issues since it would be tied to my banking info should I use it to bypass a government censor?

        VPS can see ip addresses and encrypted data. Banking sites log your IP so yes they can tag your IP to your identity. Not a problem with shared airvpn and all.

        With pihole you can have a different server connected to your router ie your home lab

        But for whole network routing through VPN, the router itself must be doing it. Not the home lab.

          • FuckyWucky [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            1 month ago

            Client(s) - > Your Router (hosting Wireguard VPN client -> Encrypted Wireguard Tunnel Over Internet - >VPS (Wireguard Server) -> Internet.

            With pihole you mentioned before

            Your DNS Queries (only DNS on udp port 53) -> Pihole on homelab (blocks/caches and forwards to encrypted dns, either port 443 or 853) -> Router -> DNS Sever listening on same 443/853 (Eg 1.1.1.1) whichever you set in settings of pihole