Browsers, Routers and Proxies?
What you talken bout Jekyl? In some of my post’s you will see me mention Routers, Browser extensions and Proxies, so in order to make sure that everyone is on the same page. I though I’d create an Article explaining what each of these things are and how you can use each to your benefit. I’ll start with Routers since they will be the most Beneficial to you. Routers is a bit of an advanced topic in the privacy sector but with a little reading and google searches anyone can learn how to setup a router to connect to your VPN Providers Service. I do plan on creating an Article explaining how to do this in the near future. However this Post is on going to cover what this can achieve and how you can benefit from it. I will not be teaching how to setup a router in this post. A router is usually installed by your ISP to connect to the Internet. The good thing about these is that you can flash custom firmware on them. This would be very similar to changing the Operating System on your computer. The more popular firmware that is used is DD-WRT or Tomato, but they aren’t compatible with all Routers. This means you will need to research if your Router is compatible with one of these firmware’s. Otherwise you will need to purchase one that is compatible with one of them. Now what this firmware will do is allow you to connect to your VPN Provider directly from your Router. This will most likely be done through Open VPN or by some other means on the Router. For Accurate instructions on how to do this your VPN Provider will most likely have Instructions on their support page. By connecting to your VPN Provider this way it will allow you to secure all of the devices behind the Router and if your Provider has a device cap the Router will only count as one device. This means that you can Secure any number of devices connected to that Router at a cost of only one Device connected to your VPN Provider allowing you to secure more devices at one time.This will also allow you to offer a very secure WiFi connection spot. That being said anyone can still connect to the Router and see it’s traffic because it’s not encrypted until it leaves the Router. This is a great Feature for a VPN Service Provider to offer because it allows you to hack your device cap and some will allow you to purchase a router that’s already setup and configured for their service. Now that’s enough about Routers we also have Browser Extensions and Proxy Servers to talk about as well. I’ll move on to Browser Extensions since that will be the next most beneficial feature. A Browser Extension is very helpful in fine tuning your connection to your VPN Provider and will sometimes add additional features that the App it’s self doesn’t. By installing your VPN Providers Browser all of your Internet traffic from that Browser will be Encrypted. This is for when you only want your Web Traffic Encrypted and not all of your Internet Traffic. This option will also decrease your Bandwidth usage since you will only be Encrypting Part of your Internet Traffic. Another very useful feature of this is you can usually connect a certain web page to a specific server and a different page to a different server. This means you can have Facebook open in one tab connected to a server in England and you can be surfing Google in the United States in another Tab while your in China. This will allow you to fine tune you use of the service for what ever you might need. A lot of Browser Extensions will also add additional features like SmartDNS or WebRTC protection. Allowing you to get the most out of their Service. Proxy Servers are a nice little extra that most VPN Providers will offer. Connection through Proxy Servers is not Encrypted so your Traffic wont be secure, but this will allow you to spoof your location when Encryption isn’t important. Spoofing your location will help to increase speed since your traffic doesn’t need to be Encrypted. While you normally can’t notice any difference in Internet Speed when connected to a VPN and when not. Sometimes Higher Speeds are necessary and you need to cut out the time it takes to Encrypt and Transmit your Encrypted traffic but you still need your location spoofed. This is where a Proxy Server comes in hand and there are two different Types of Proxy Servers HTTP and SOCKS Proxies. An HTTP Proxy or whats known as a Transparent Proxy. These types of Proxies handle HTTP or Web Traffic and that is all they support. This is useful if you are only trying to send your Web Traffic to the Proxy Server like a Browser Extension. This type of Proxy is also very smart it can understand the traffic and cache Certain Requests to allow faster Internet Speeds. The SOCKS Proxy is a far more popular Proxy Server and a more powerful one. While it doesn’t cache response to speed you connection it does support a vast number of Protocols allowing you to send it all of your Internet Traffic. The SOCKS Proxy is a far more Secure Proxy Server to use than HTTP and allows you to connect on any port using any Protocol allowing you to further Fine tune your service depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Having a VPN Provider that offers both of these as an additional feature is great and most VPN Providers will offer this. While it doesn’t increase you Security it does allow for fine tuning your service giving you a lot of control over what you can do. That wraps it up for this post I hope I was able to clarify certain terms for you and explain how they can be used to your benefit. If there is still something that you don’t understand my Recommended articles are a great place to find more information or you can browse all of my posts on my Home page. I try and write posts on every thing that I mention in my posts to allow anyone to learn and understand what I’m talking about, so it is very possible that I have a post explaining what you don’t understand or you are more than welcome to leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
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