Programming

27863 readers

393 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

snowe@programming.dev

Ategon@programming.dev

UlrikHD@programming.dev

bugsmith@programming.dev

Spyro@programming.dev

Why does every VPN need to rewrite their own client? (programming.dev)

submitted 2 hours ago by onlinepersona@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been testing VPN services and somehow every one with a client has written their own. Proton, Windscribe, IVPN, Mullvad, AirVPN, NordVPN, and the list goes on.

Don't these services all do the same thing? Connect to a server to get a list of servers, then use WireGuard or OpenVPN to make a connection, and have some fancy stuff like split tunneling or a killswitch. It should just take configuration by adding profiles per service and it should be possible to use the same client.

What am I missing?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] voytrekk@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Proton offers downloading config files as well, at least for paid customers. I do agree that providers that do not provide these are at least somewhat shady in their business practices.

At best, having a separate VPN client can offer some extra features over the standard openvpn/wireguard config files. They can allow quickly changing settings and detect the fastest server.