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  1. #1

    VPN tunnels away from Sweden. Where to?

    The Swedish parliament just passed a law mandating all information passing the Swedish borders to be copied to the government (no kidding). We wish to offer people VPN tunnels out of the country to protect their communication and therefore need:

    * A location with good connectivity with Sweden (like somewhere in Europe)
    * A location where traffic is not normally routed through Sweden (such as Finland)
    * Lots of bandwidth
    * Many IP addresses
    * No storage space
    * Linux

    Where to turn for something like that?

  2. #2
    Hello,

    Yes, that law is a bit scary, it may push people to start using encryption for everything by default. Of course only end-to-end encryption really protects communications, so the tunnels you want are of limited value, but that is entirely your business.

    Lots of bandwidth and no storage is going to be a custom setup, I wouldn't look at stock VPS plans for that, but for providers you can come to an arrangement with.

    The hardest part is going to be the IP addresses. Of course if you just buy one VPS per client you get one IP address, no problem. Your usage would be clearly justified and normal. The routing might be a little tricky to set up but you only have to do that once.

    You could also use a single VPS with a huge number of IP addresses. This can be trickier, not because your use isn't justified, but your chosen provider should probably handle it as a separate RIPE request for you so everything is clear and in place from the outset.

    There are some issues you didn't touch upon, such as what you are allowed to do from your VPS (e.g. IRC communications are often not allowed, so even running an IRC client over the VPN would be forbidden), and processor and memory requirements. OpenVPN is pretty good on memory, but encryption does take quite a few cycles.

    Jim
    Blue Room Hosting - High availability UK VPS
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    NJ, USA
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    A VPS would not work. If you are doing encryption, encryption uses a lot of CPU. You would need a very powerful server for this.
    AS395558

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    London
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    We have many customers running personal VPNs on their Xen VPS plans but I agree for mass scale purposes dedicated server(s) would be more appropriate.

    Requesting many IPs should not be a problem where there is good justification, though I suspect for some uses you could run multiple tunnels on one IP.

    Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt would be the usual hotspots for good and cost effective connectivity.
    Andrew Ogilvie | Xtraordinary Hosting | AS30827 | Member of LINX
    Dedicated Servers in Central London | Xen VPS Linux & Windows | Complex Hosting | London BGP4 Bandwidth

  5. #5
    When testing OpenVPN on an Intel E8200 2.66 GHz it can transmit 13 MB/s at 60% load (and receive several times more). Can a few hundred kB/s then really be a problem?

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
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    US/EU/UK
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    This is weird... I think NEtherlands should be a good place for you.
    HostColor.com Edge Infrastructure - US Dedicated Servers & Europe Dedicated Hostingsince 2000
    In 50 U.S. Edge Data Centers & 80 POPs worldwide
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  7. #7
    You should really be looking at colocation space.

    This is because for the scale you want, the hardware is usually rack mountable 1U to 3U in form factor, but is not general purpose servers. They may start out as x86 boxes, but have hardware assisted crypto acceleration layered on top. There are two of them cracked open on the shelf above my head awaiting completion of firmware modifications.

    The vendor thinks they are tamper proof, uhm, nope ...

    Another vote for NL here. 040hosting is NL based and hangs around here.
    Last edited by plumsauce; 07-15-2008 at 05:25 PM.
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