Hardware Solution for Hiding My IP - In Plain English Please!

D

DreamBliss

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 28, 2005
Messages
205
I'm about to go looking around NewEgg and Amazon. What I want is simple to describe. I want to hide my IP and my internet activities from my ISP. Why? None of your business, same as it's none of their business what I'm doing. So no need for arguments here. If you just want to argue go elsewhere, if you want to help please post.

I did a little searching earlier and it looks as if some routers have a VPN built in. My current router is a Linksys WRT160Nv3 Wireless N router hooked to a standard Comcast cable modem box. I have looked through its options and nothing sticks out to me as a VPN setup area. I have static IPs for two laptops hooked to our wireless network, one laptop is Windows Vista the other is Windows XP.

I am not stuck on VPN. ANY hardware solution, with exceptionally easy to understand instructions or just as easy to understand setup options in its interface will work. So a hardware proxy, VPN, or just some sort of encryption. I don't care. I just want something, hardware, not software - I REPEAT, NO SOFTWARE, NO WEB SERVICES I HAVE TO PAY FOR,, that will make mt internet activities completely anonymous, unable to be throttled, unable to be detected, beyond of course usage of the internet in general. In other words they can see that I'm doing something, but can get no details. I hope I have made that clear enough.

What I use has to be compatible with Comcast obviously, as they are my ISP and I have no other I can use in this area. It must also not have throttling and blocking features built in that I can not disable or turn off. In other words, it has to work with P2P or anything else I want to use it for. Trying to get away from throttling and blocking here, so a router that just does what my ISP does is useless.

So your suggestions would be appreciated as to any hardware based solutions that will meet my needs. Also any Idiot's or Dummy's like guides to help me understand any of this stuff would be appreciated. Especially if, for example, you tell me that I can't have what I want. I will want to know why, and I will want to have whatever it is that makes what you say true explained and illustrated to me so I can understand it. I'm smart, but I am not an IT guy or a networking professional.

Links to recommended devices also appreciated. Try to keep it $100.00 or less if at all possible. If not go ahead and share it anyway. Just trying to stay in the range of an amount I might someday be able to afford. If you come in here with a $5,000 dream device what good would it be to an unemployed, broke person like me?

Well I'll leave you folks to it and I appreciate your help -
- Deathbliss
 
So I don't think you really understand what a VPN is, or I'm not really understanding what you want.

A VPN is an encrypted tunnel between two endpoints. You buy one of those devices and connect to another device somewhere else. Any traffic transiting those two devices "can't" be inspected but you still need somewhere to connect to. This is usually another device for a corporate network, but otherwise an internet based VPN (Ipredator / vyprvpn) etc that are almost always at a cost.

If I'm mistaken and you want to say, use your laptop out in the real world but connect back to your home network, and the traffic not be inspected then a VPN device and a VPN software client on the laptop would be the way to go. I don't think this is what you want though.

Your other option is something like Tor, but is software based and in my previous experience with it, VERY slow (maybe it's better now?)
 
My setup is like this:

Cable modem hooked to wireless router in the house.
Two laptops wirelessly on internet through router.

Now as I understand it the cable modem provides internet from the ISP. Since the cable modem is not wireless, the router takes the wired signal and wirelessly beams it within a certain area so the laptops or anything else on the wireless network can get online. I could probably simplify my network by using a wireless cable modem with VPN but will that interpret and work with Comcast (my isp?)

By your description a wireless N VPN router is what I want, because it would hide the activities of the laptops connected through it. Do I understand this correctly?

BTW thank you for posting, nice to see I'm not the only night owl around here :)
- Deathbliss
 
You can't ultimately have what you want, even if you use a VPN provider they will be able to see what/where you are going just like your ISP can now.
 
Deathbliss said:
By your description a wireless N VPN router is what I want, because it would hide the activities of the laptops connected through it. Do I understand this correctly?
Click to expand...

Not really no, the connection is quite linear, even in your case

1. ISP - 2. Cable mode - 3. Router (- 4. WiFi AP, in the same box as the router) - 5. Laptop.

The connection between 1 (the ISP) and 2 (the cable modem) is how the ISP knows where your traffic is going, any encryption internally isn't going to help you. Encrypting the content between 3 and 5 is still going to tell your ISP where your traffic is going.

What you need to do is effectively add another step in there so it's like this:

1. VPN ISP - 2. VPN provider endpoint - 3. Your ISP - 4. Cable mode - 5. VPN Router (- 6. WiFi AP) - 7. Laptop.

Now anything between point 2 (the VPN provider) and point 5 (your new VPN router) is encrypted, so the only people that know where you're going is your laptop, your VPN router, the VPN provider's endpoint and then the VPN's ISP. 3 and 4 have no idea what you're doing or where you're going, other than it's VPN traffic going to your VPN provider

I'm sorta hoping I'm not confusing you more there!

And yes, as bmh.01 said, the VPN provider will know where you're going then, but the layer of obfuscation (ie Comcast won't know what you're doing without asking the VPN provider) helps separate you from them. Just be aware that most VPN providers will hand your details to law enforcement if subpoenaed, they do keep logs and they won't go to jail for you (not that I'm assuming you're doing anything illegal)
 
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not possible, you will eventually have to pay for a service to get what you want... or at least find someone online offering services for free that they could/should charge for... the only free option is TOR, and i don't think that's what you want...
 
Somebody is going to see what youre doing, its the nature of how networks work. You can encrypt from certain parts of the network, but their equipment has to know where to send the packets.

And any resource for the network+ exam would be a good starting point on the dummies guide to networking you were asking about. There are RFC documents out there that go in to more detail about how every part of networking works. Those define networking standards so reading those is going to the source.
 
Deathbliss said:
So a hardware proxy, VPN, or just some sort of encryption. I don't care. I just want something, hardware, not software - I REPEAT, NO SOFTWARE, NO WEB SERVICES I HAVE TO PAY FOR,, that will make mt internet activities completely anonymous, unable to be throttled, unable to be detected, beyond of course usage of the internet in general.
Click to expand...

You'll have to either subscribe to a service, or co-locate a server somewhere to achieve your goal. If you don't, your ISP will see anything you do.

Why don't you want to subscribe to a service? Do you think they will turn your home IP address over to someone?
 
I want to hide my IP ... from my ISP
Click to expand...

I want to have sex with someone without them knowing it was my unit inside them. The lights are on and they can see my face clearly, but they can't know it's me.
 
I use Hide My Ass with a pfSense firewall and use that to force all traffic over my VPN to Hide My Ass. I do this by having LAN rules that force the traffic I want to use the gateway of the VPN tunnel.

Works great for watching BBC iPlayer while sitting on my sofa in Calgary, Alberta :)
 
If you're hiding what you're doing from comcast you're just exposing it to someone else, whether you pay for it or not, and the less you pay for it the more likely it is they're going to spy on what you do and inject bad things you don't want, far far more likely and worse than what comcast or any other legit ISP would do.

Closest thing I know of to what you're looking for is secure sessions from ironkey, they claim they don't keep logs, but it can't work from your router, has to be setup as a proxy via software associated with a $100+ USB flash drive connected to the current computer you want secured.
 
mwarps said:
I want to have sex with someone without them knowing it was my unit inside them. The lights are on and they can see my face clearly, but they can't know it's me.
Click to expand...

creepiest analogy ever...


it's like you went way out of your way to make it as creepy as possible...
 
Ultimately there is no way to hide what you are doing on the internet. If you could there would be no way for the traffic to get to you. You have 2 options: let Comcast see your traffic, or pay for a VPN service and let them see what you are doing. What you are asking for in your first post is just simply not possible. Encription does not work without an encryption service on the other end. VPN does not work without a VPN concentrator on the other end. Proxy servers dont work without an endpoint. You cant just place something in between your computer and the internet and "hide" your activities. It is not possible. The only way to truly hide your activities from your ISP or the authorities is not not have an internet connection. Simple truth.
 
Deathbliss said:
I'm about to go looking around NewEgg and Amazon. What I want is simple to describe. I want to hide my IP and my internet activities from my ISP. Why? None of your business, same as it's none of their business what I'm doing. So no need for arguments here. If you just want to argue go elsewhere, if you want to help please post.

I did a little searching earlier and it looks as if some routers have a VPN built in. My current router is a Linksys WRT160Nv3 Wireless N router hooked to a standard Comcast cable modem box. I have looked through its options and nothing sticks out to me as a VPN setup area. I have static IPs for two laptops hooked to our wireless network, one laptop is Windows Vista the other is Windows XP.

I am not stuck on VPN. ANY hardware solution, with exceptionally easy to understand instructions or just as easy to understand setup options in its interface will work. So a hardware proxy, VPN, or just some sort of encryption. I don't care. I just want something, hardware, not software - I REPEAT, NO SOFTWARE, NO WEB SERVICES I HAVE TO PAY FOR,, that will make mt internet activities completely anonymous, unable to be throttled, unable to be detected, beyond of course usage of the internet in general. In other words they can see that I'm doing something, but can get no details. I hope I have made that clear enough.

What I use has to be compatible with Comcast obviously, as they are my ISP and I have no other I can use in this area. It must also not have throttling and blocking features built in that I can not disable or turn off. In other words, it has to work with P2P or anything else I want to use it for. Trying to get away from throttling and blocking here, so a router that just does what my ISP does is useless.

So your suggestions would be appreciated as to any hardware based solutions that will meet my needs. Also any Idiot's or Dummy's like guides to help me understand any of this stuff would be appreciated. Especially if, for example, you tell me that I can't have what I want. I will want to know why, and I will want to have whatever it is that makes what you say true explained and illustrated to me so I can understand it. I'm smart, but I am not an IT guy or a networking professional.

Links to recommended devices also appreciated. Try to keep it $100.00 or less if at all possible. If not go ahead and share it anyway. Just trying to stay in the range of an amount I might someday be able to afford. If you come in here with a $5,000 dream device what good would it be to an unemployed, broke person like me?

Well I'll leave you folks to it and I appreciate your help -
- Deathbliss
Click to expand...

if you are connecting to a source that is natively non encrypted, some part of your traffic will have to travel unencrypted as well.

For example, let's say you connect to an http website. The last portion of that traffic must be unencrypted because http is not encrypted. The best you could do in this case is try to get a vpn service as close as possible to that http server, but the last portion will still be unencrypted.

Now, if you simply don't want YOUR ISP seeing your traffic, then you can sign up with some vpn service online that you can send encrypted traffic to, and then the vpn service will send unencrypted traffic to your destination. However, there is a chance that the vpn service might need to send traffic straight back to YOUR ISP, in which case YOUR ISP will still see your data. But at least YOUR ISP will not know who that data originates from, all they will see is the IP of the vpn service (and hopefully your vpn service doesn't hand out client information on request!).

If you want to be truly and completely hidden on the internet, you must use
1) Encrypted public services, https, ssh, etc. Only you and the encrypted service have access to that information
2) Create a vpn between you and wherever you're trying to connect to (not reasonable for most public services, but you can do this if you own both points of interest)
3) lease a private line from YOUR ISP. (well.. YOUR ISP still controls this one... so not sure if this is really a solution for you, supposedly they're supposed to keep it private... but that there words vs yours. Also the same issues as VPN still apply here, plus it expensive)

it sounds like what you're interested in is bittorrent traffic. I'm pretty sure there is a common encryption method used among bittorrent clients. I'm not familiar with it but you should do a little research on that.
 
1. Go to 7-11 and buy prepaid Visa card w/ cash
2. Buy a VPS
3. Setup a VPN server on said VPS
4. Route your traffic through that VPN on the VPS
5. Realize that in the end, what people are saying here is correct - you'd only be hiding your trail from your ISP specifically, not from everybody and certainly not for free.
 
Is this a violation of your ISP terms of service? I would sure be paying attention to that at some point.

If your request is based on the principle of the matter, more power to you. But if your trying to cover up some illegal activity, this thread will probably shut down fairly soon, as it's against [H]'s TOS.
 
Ultimately this thread is simply about my personal privacy and will not delve into illegal matters that violate this forum's TOS.

Well thank you all for posting. I have a better understanding now of a few things. But I still need a little clarification, so let's try another tack, shall we?

Let's say I get one of the VPN routers I posted links to, or another, whatever I get based on your recommendation as the best one. I set everything up and am tunneling through the router with the two laptops. With me so far?

So in this example, exactly what, if anything, will my ISP see? What advantage, if anything, will I get from this setup?

Appreciate your help is making sure I understand this!
- Deathbliss
 
Deathbliss said:
Ultimately this thread is simply about my personal privacy and will not delve into illegal matters that violate this forum's TOS.

Well thank you all for posting. I have a better understanding now of a few things. But I still need a little clarification, so let's try another tack, shall we?

Let's say I get one of the VPN routers I posted links to, or another, whatever I get based on your recommendation as the best one. I set everything up and am tunneling through the router with the two laptops. With me so far?

So in this example, exactly what, if anything, will my ISP see? What advantage, if anything, will I get from this setup?

Appreciate your help is making sure I understand this!
- Deathbliss
Click to expand...

just because your traffic is tunneled through A vpn, it has to come out somewhere. so no matter what you do, YOU CAN"T HIDE! if you really want to not get caught then go use a internet cafe.

EVEN then you can still be tracked, so what ever you are trying to do, well get over it.

oh there actually is a way to hide this all, ITS CALLED NOT USE A COMPUTER AT ALL!
 
Deathbliss said:
Ultimately this thread is simply about my personal privacy and will not delve into illegal matters that violate this forum's TOS.

Well thank you all for posting. I have a better understanding now of a few things. But I still need a little clarification, so let's try another tack, shall we?

Let's say I get one of the VPN routers I posted links to, or another, whatever I get based on your recommendation as the best one. I set everything up and am tunneling through the router with the two laptops. With me so far?

So in this example, exactly what, if anything, will my ISP see? What advantage, if anything, will I get from this setup?

Appreciate your help is making sure I understand this!
- Deathbliss
Click to expand...

Where are you tunnelling the VPN router too? Are you planning on paying for a VPN service? - I think you have completly missed the point of all the previous posters.

dashpuppy said:
YOU CAN"T HIDE!
Click to expand...

This!

I fear that you have heard VPN or TOR somewhere and think its some magic answer to your question, it isnt. There are ways of hiding your internet use from your ISP, but not from everyone, so you are just moving the problem, from a large company with better things to do than track your usage to someone else.

So I will ask you this OP, if there was a device that costed less than $100 and completely anonymised your internet usage, why in the world wouldnt everyone be using it? - The answer is because no such thing exists, nor ever will.
 
I think the extra layers of visibility is the thing, it just comes down to who you trust. If you don't trust your ISP then you can use a VPN provider, if you don't trust the VPN provider then you're SoL :)
 
Deathbliss said:
So in this example, exactly what, if anything, will my ISP see? What advantage, if anything, will I get from this setup?
Click to expand...

they (ISP) could, theoretically, see a connection from your IP address to a remote IP address and encrypted data flowing between these two points.
That would be about it.
 
j-sta said:
they (ISP) could, theoretically, see a connection from your IP address to a remote IP address and encrypted data flowing between these two points.
That would be about it.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this.
 
There was a program out there that would act as a proxy thus somewhat hiding the sites you go to from your ISP. I can't find it right now. thought I had a copy of it. But you install it onto a USB drive and boot from it. While your running from it though other users may end up going through your connection as well.

Was sort of a p2p style proxy setup. Kind of neat but I never used it personally.
 
Deathbliss said:
Let's say I get one of the VPN routers I posted links to, or another, whatever I get based on your recommendation as the best one. I set everything up and am tunneling through the router with the two laptops. With me so far?
Click to expand...
So then you're considering getting a vpn service?
 
j-sta said:
they (ISP) could, theoretically, see a connection from your IP address to a remote IP address and encrypted data flowing between these two points.
That would be about it.
Click to expand...

OK, well then that sounds like exactly what I want.

I should be clear here... I used the word, "HIDE" but what I really meant was, "OBSCURE." I know the ISP will see data being moved around. I don't mind them seeing that, as long as either A. They can't get any specifics on said data or B. They can't tie my IP to it.

From this and the following poster's reply it sounds like a VPN router will give me one of these two things.

To answer the poster with the, "Why isn't everyone using it?" question my answer is this. Soap prevents the spread of germs and is easily available in most restrooms. Yet the majority of people don't use it after wiping their arse or taking a leak. So just because something is good for you, and easily available, it does not mean everyone knows about it or will use it even if they did ;)

So have I won the coveted, "Most Disturbing Analogy" award?

Another question... What is the point of a VPN router? I mean what does the typical home user use it for?

The only other thing is we haven't really covered alternative options like setting up one's own proxy. Besides VPN what other hardware options exist for A and B above, respectively?

Hey my thanks to all the helpful posters who have come in here and shed some light on this. I appreciate it!
- Deathbliss
 
VPN would require a vpn provider on the other end of the connection and a vpn router will let it be one end of the connection.

You still need to connect it to something on the other end, either with your computer out in the internet that connects to the router to be able to access your internal network, or to connect your router to a vpn service provider then out to the internet.

The people I know that use vpn at home, it is to access their internal network from elsewhere.
 
Deathbliss said:
OK, well then that sounds like exactly what I want.

I should be clear here... I used the word, "HIDE" but what I really meant was, "OBSCURE." I know the ISP will see data being moved around. I don't mind them seeing that, as long as either A. They can't get any specifics on said data or B. They can't tie my IP to it.

From this and the following poster's reply it sounds like a VPN router will give me one of these two things.

To answer the poster with the, "Why isn't everyone using it?" question my answer is this. Soap prevents the spread of germs and is easily available in most restrooms. Yet the majority of people don't use it after wiping their arse or taking a leak. So just because something is good for you, and easily available, it does not mean everyone knows about it or will use it even if they did ;)

So have I won the coveted, "Most Disturbing Analogy" award?

Another question... What is the point of a VPN router? I mean what does the typical home user use it for?

The only other thing is we haven't really covered alternative options like setting up one's own proxy. Besides VPN what other hardware options exist for A and B above, respectively?

Hey my thanks to all the helpful posters who have come in here and shed some light on this. I appreciate it!
- Deathbliss
Click to expand...

Again I think you are missing the point, a VPN router will give you the ability to connect to a monthly paid VPN server somewhere else. This will then route all trafic through the VPN, essentially encrypting it from your ISP's eyes.- HOWEVER the paid VPN provider will still be able to see exactly what you are doing!

So the question then is, do you dislike your ISP provider enough, to let some-other third party company monitor what you are doing instead? - Since you dont know anything about this third party and they are likely in another country...are you happy they will see what you do?

If so then buy any router that allows IPSec or even PTPP dependent on what your newly found paid VPN provider supports - its a bit chicken or egg there, to do what you are asking you need to find a VPN provider you are happy to sign up for first.
 
Deathbliss said:
Ultimately this thread is simply about my personal privacy and will not delve into illegal matters that violate this forum's TOS.

Well thank you all for posting. I have a better understanding now of a few things. But I still need a little clarification, so let's try another tack, shall we?

Let's say I get one of the VPN routers I posted links to, or another, whatever I get based on your recommendation as the best one. I set everything up and am tunneling through the router with the two laptops. With me so far?
Click to expand...

Listen....get the idea of a VPN router out of your head...it cannot help you towards your goal.
When you see those routers with VPN endpoint features...or routers that support site to site VPN tunnels (such as most business grade routers)...those are for two things.
*Creating wide area networks...connecting satellite offices.
*Allowing remote users, such as those that work at home, or road warriors sales people...to connect to the central office from out on the road.
The VPN tunnels is being used to allow access to the internal network.

So unless you plan on having yourself...or friends/family connect to your home network from out on the road....or you plan on connecting your home network with the home networks of other friends/family....getting routers that support VPN tunnels will be of no...I repeat...NO...additional benefit for you. They give you ZERO anonymous surfing features. They only encrypt the LAN traffic between the two points that you already own and have them setup on (such as two office buildings across town). They will not encrypt your outbound or inbound traffic to and from the internet as far as internet traffic....such as surfing of downloading kiddie porn or warez.
 
As the two above stated, VPN isn't some magic obscuring protocol, it just changes who gets to spy on all your traffic. Let us discuss some problems with VPN that you seem to be unfamiliar with or keeping yourself blissfully ignorant of:

Your VPN connection speed will be the slowest of 3 different factors: your ISP connection, your VPN providers connection, and the speed at which both ends of said VPN connection can encrypt and decrypt traffic. For instance if you have comcast's 30Mbit service then you will at no time be able to exceed 30Mbit/sec (obviously) however if your VPN provider oversubscribes a 1Gbit connection and only has enough bandwidth to give you 10Mbit/sec at most times, then your 30Mbit becomes 10Mbit, except for the fact that the super cheap VPN router you bought can only decrypt incoming VPN traffic at 5Mbit, so despite your crappy VPN provider you still only see 5Mbit of your 30Mbit cable speed.

YOUR VPN PROVIDER WILL GET PAID. So no matter how long you search trying to find that one great AND free VPN host, SOMEBODY will be paying for that link, and if you're not a paying customer, then you're the product being sold. The less you pay the less you can expect in terms of both performance and ESPECIALLY security. What comcast does to their traffic is fairly well known, MILLIONS of people use it, including security experts, and if they start messing with things, for instance resetting torrent connections, these experts take notice and call them out on it. Comcast is bound by both federal and local laws regarding what they can and can't do with the data you give them. How many people use whatever VPN service you decide to go with? Even if they have a ten thousand customer base that's less than 1% of comcast's user base and how many of them are security experts who know what to look for? Where is this VPN service located and what kind of laws are in place to protect you from them snooping on EVERYTHING you do?

If you don't trust comcast why in the world would you trust some 3rd party VPN provider that you pay little to nothing for? If you're doing something illegal and the VPN provider is in the US they'd still have to comply with any court orders. Even if they're not in the US there's nothing from stopping them from, say, telling the RIAA's lawyers "sure we got ALL the info for what that person was doing and we'll gladly share it with you for a cut". There's also nothing stopping them from redirecting your DNS requests to their own servers, injecting ads, performing MITM attacks on secure connections, and all around logging every single last thing you do over their VPN connection.

There's very little real annonimity on the internet, and certainly no legal real annonimity. The psudo-annonimity comcast gives is really about as good as it gets so long as whatever you're doing doesn't get court orders involved. If what you're doing might get court orders involved, you might want to rethink what you're doing.

Also your answer to why everyone doesn't use it is wrong, as the guy you were responding to stated, the real reason is IT DOESN'T EXIST.
 
This is the funniest fucking thread I've ever read.
 
RocketTech said:
Change your IP address to 127.0.0.1- no one will ever find you.
Click to expand...

:D
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Just sign up to a vpn service that uses shared IP, so even if they are forced to turn over records or logs, nothing can be directly traced back to you. They're only around $40 a year.
 
Deathbliss said:
Another question... What is the point of a VPN router? I mean what does the typical home user use it for?
Click to expand...

home users pretty much never have a real reason to use a VPN router, unless they telecommute or the like. When I was a field tech for a local ISP, I only came across this once for a personal account, and it was for their work.

if you get a VPN service that supports the use of a VPN router, it means the router itself establishes the VPN tunnel. This then means you do not need to run VPN software on each computer to establish the VPN tunnel.

Some posts in this thread are making this out to be much more complicated and obscure than it really needs to be. The OP is asking a fucking question for God's sake, what's the point of some of the harsh posts?
 
j-sta said:
home users pretty much never have a real reason to use a VPN router, unless they telecommute or the like. When I was a field tech for a local ISP, I only came across this once for a personal account, and it was for their work.

if you get a VPN service that supports the use of a VPN router, it means the router itself establishes the VPN tunnel. This then means you do not need to run VPN software on each computer to establish the VPN tunnel.

Some posts in this thread are making this out to be much more complicated and obscure than it really needs to be. The OP is asking a fucking question for God's sake, what's the point of some of the harsh posts?
Click to expand...

Because it doesn't make sense what he is doing. he's trying to hide him self, but thinking a VPN will do this. all the VPN is doing is changing where the traffic is going in and out of, that's it. It's not hiding anything...
 
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