"RoS discovered a number of new findings, and we would like to thank them for their thorough and detailed report. They stated , amongst other things that: that whilst they found some issues, that: “The Mullvad VPN relays which were the subject of this test showed a mature architecture…” and “During the test we found no logging of user activity data…”
I’ll take a stab at an explanation, someone help me out if I get something wrong or if it could be explained better:
If you’re doing a P2P related activity over a VPN (or otherwise), port forwarding is very important for improving speed or enabling the service at all. That’s because your router blocks incoming traffic from certain ports by default, ports that will be used with a P2P connection. To get around this, you can ‘forward’ a port that can be used for said P2P activity, letting your router know that the traffic you expect to see from a specific port should be let through.
You can simply leave port forwarding to your personal router, but if you want to stay anonymous while participating in P2P connections, then you’ll want to use a VPN service. If a VPN service doesn’t utilize port forwarding, then any P2P connections you use will either be straight up impossible, or very slow. For example, you wanted to host a gaming server without giving away your actual IP address, then a VPN with port forwarding is desirable. The same can be said for torrenting.
Why doesn’t the new UDP torrent protocol use STUN or any of the server- or peer-assisted ways of punching a UDP hole between two NAT-ed endpoints?
I appreciate the breakdown, but I meant i was ignorant on why port forwarding was important for a VPN :)
I didnt realize you still had to port forward to get around ISP traffick shaping/blockage with a VPN. Thought the encrypted tunnel between you and the VPN disguised that, and any port stuff was done at their end, after exiting the tunnel.
If the VPN doesn’t use port forwarding, then they randomly assign a port. But P2P services expect to know which port they need to use, so getting a port assigned randomly is no good for said P2P services. You want a static port that is forwarded by the VPN that you can tell the P2P service.
So if you’re not using a P2P service that needs a port to access, then a non-port-forwarding VPN will still do all the usual encryption to disguise your activity as usual. But if you are using a P2P that needs to access a specific port, the P2P service will probably get blocked at the VPN’s port.
@Helldiver_M @Dubious_Fart @leraje actually the port forwarding thing is about accepting inbound connections. Without port forwarding, NAT routers (including VPNs) randomly allocate ports for outbound connections but still won’t accept inbound connections on those same ports.
There’s a trick where you discover the randomly allocated port numbers and then both connect to each other at the same time so both routers think it’s outbound. It works unreliably and BitTorrent doesn’t use it.
I found out about this port forwarding matter a few days ago and gave it a try with PIA, and was disappointed with the results, but I’d like to know if I did something wrong on my end.
I’m currently torrenting about 100 torrents in a VPS running Qbittorrent with a Wireguard config from Mullvad, and I’ve been able to get great speeds, about 500 Mbps at the highest.
The other day I set up PIA with gluetun, through OpenVPN, with port forwarding too, put all the 100 torrents in Deluge too. The upload speeds for seeding didn’t seem any faster, but the download speeds were not quite as good. It would top at around 200 Mbps, best case.
Out of curiosity I also tried wireguard configs from Windscribe, with no port forwarding though, and it would also top out at about 250 Mbps or so.
I’m currently back with Mullvad and Qbittorrent. It’s been working fine for months now, so I’m wondering if I’m really missing out without port forwarding.
Anyway, and tips or suggestions are welcome!
Yeah, it works fine for me, so…?
Jeez is this why my torrents slowed down to a crawl lately? I’m on Mullvad and wasn’t aware they removed port forwarding, or even really what port forwarding is until now.