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Comment by kevingadd | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of whether you break the law on a regular basis, having a personal VPS is a very good idea these days.

I still regularly run into problems with websites and applications related to geolocation, blacklisting, or routing, and being able to proxy stuff through my VPS enables me to keep getting things done.

In particular, if you're a Comcast user a VPS is pretty essential since their routing and peering are awful.

Being able to run sensitive traffic through an SSH tunnel when you're on public Wi-fi is also a nice perk.

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I'm considering purchasing Comcast internet for businesses (not the residential stuff), and am interested in your comments about bad routing and peering. Can you expand on that, please?

EDIT: I'm talking about Chicagoland region. Didn't know it was geographic.

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg15068.html http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg15911.html http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Claims-Resurface-Concerni...

I have had fine service with Comcast. The thing to remember is that Comcast is basically an umbrella over many companies generally separated by state. To further complicate things one area within a state may have better equipment than another area.

An example: if you are in Salt Lake City, your traffic to the west coast (i.e. California and Washington) is first routed to Dallas, TX, then across New Mexico and Arizona on a saturated link that limits you to a few mbits/s.

I am in Seattle. To get to my work VPN, also in Seattle, my traffic is routed through San Jose because Comcast refuse to peer with my employer's provider.

Comcast customer service has a resemblance to retail shopping in the old Soviet Union. Ohh... you think it can't possibly be that bad. You get stuck having to take your cable box to a Comcast customer service center. You'll see.

Where's the best place to get a personal VPS?

I highly recommend Gandi: https://www.gandi.net/

They have a friendly management interface, which keeps getting more impressive over time. They scale very well based on what you need, and I've found their support quite helpful as well.

I also recommend their domain name registration; in addition to having much better policies than most registrars, they also provide email for their domains, which saves you the trouble of maintaining a mail server yourself.

What does it cost per month for a simple VPS service that can do this?

I have a couple of very small VPS's which cost $15-20 per year. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee per month. There are plenty of similar offers on sites like LowEndBox.com. A few SSH tunnels on a minimal Debian install shouldn't take up more than 64MB of RAM, so you don't really need an expensive Linode for that.

Caveat: These low-cost "companies" go out of business all the time, so you'd better read the reviews. But since I consider them disposable anyway, I don't really care if the uptime isn't 99.9% or the company goes bankrupt after 9 months. If you plan to do anything other than tunneling with your VPS, I'd suggest that you pay at least $10 per month.

You can get a year on Amazon for free.

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