Serverless VPN Self-hosted | Hacker News Reader

Serverless VPN Self-hosted

serverlessvpn.com

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I sort of get the idea, but the page doesn't really sell me on what differentiates it from the competition other than being serverless.

Why is this better than Tailscale, Cloudflare tunnels, Mullvad or just running a wireguard bash script on a machine somewhere.

Furthermore, because its severless, does that mean it has more latency than a typical VPN? For example, I know that when I connect to a Mullvad server, my traffic is going to be quite a bit slower than what it had been.

Serverless just means it spins up a server on demand so I doubt there will be additional latency beyond the initial connection phase. The advantage of this is that it lets you host your own VPN only when you need it, so you don't need to pay for a subscription. For serious VPN users, Mullvad and co would likely be the better choice.

As someone who only occasionally uses VPNs, this is great and I will be purchasing.

Or just use algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo/

It’s pretty easy to DIY this with docker-wireguard on any cloud provider for a lot less than $50/month. Here’s their example docker compose, only ~20 lines: https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-wireguard?tab=readme-o...

For a personal VPN a T4G nano is probably sufficient. You can probably have that up and running for less than 5 USD per month ;)

Surely AWS is the worst choice for this given that bandwidth is the main resource that VPNs consume, and AWS bandwidth is ludicrously expensive. For the €5/month that Mullvad charges for unlimited bandwidth you can only get about 60GB of EC2 egress even in the cheaper regions.

If you're in Europe, just take a scaleway stardust for €4/month with unlimited traffic :)

AWS Lightsail is made for that. VPS with 2TB of bandwidth for $5/month.

According to vantage comparator, t4g.nano (the cheapest) is $3.50 monthly, but you (probably) need to factor in public IPv4, which is $3.60 if I calculate correctly, unless you do funny hacks with port forwarding via SSM. But this is irrelevant when you factor in data transfer.

They just sell the config for $50 once off. You still have to pay the cloud provider too.

Its (at least for now) $50 once, then however much per month, your chosen cloud provider charges you for a server.

> Its (at least for now) $50 once

For upto 3 installations.

Running a VPN out of cloud services pretty much guarantees recaptcha prompts at most sites and denied access to most streaming platforms. Plus, paying per-GB adds up fast. If you're trying to evade region restriction or sail the high seas, stay away from cloud providers.

In my experience dedicated VPN providers aren't really any better in that regard. Their IP addresses have abysmal reputations for exactly the same reason that public cloud IP addresses do, if an IP address is open for bad actors to use then they absolutely will use it.

I've had mixed success with evading regional locks for sports and other content with random VPN providers. Any cloud provider I've tried is immediately blocked. Pretty easy to do since they all publish their IP ranges. If you have friends around the world, an easy thing you can do is have a shared Tailscale network with exit nodes.

I think this is a quick start with multiple templates to get back up and running after being booted.

so someone decided to build around docker + wireguard + a web UI dashboard + use buzzwords like serverless (which it isnt btw) + wrote some third-party API handlers and this is it? this is how you make $50 (once) per customer?

haha

I believe this is a hype product that is built during yC startup mentoring to encourage quickly building and sampling feedback from potential users. We, hacker news, are the testbed for this project.

Disclaimer: This is entirely conjecture and I have no way to be sure it is ycombinator or any other startup leadership course behind this. Enjoy your hn conspiracy of the day

Serverless VPN Self-Hosted is a software you run on your own servers.

Sure --- as long as the server isn't directly traceable to you.

Anyone can easily create a totally anonymous server, right? Right?

Anonimity isn't the only reason you might want a VPN. Access to remote resources, circumventing geoblocks etc..

Indeed for anonimity it's much better to take a commercial VPN where you're one of the many on the same IP. But for geoblocks it's better to have an IP they haven't seen before. Though cloud provider IPs don't fare well either.

But yeah it's a very steep price IMO. I guess they're not aiming at us techies though. We can figure this out in 10 minutes. Someone who's never heard of docker might consider it worth it.

You definitely can, there are tons of VPS providers that don't require any personal information.

Ok, how about address logs?

If the provider logs your IP when you connect, they have enough personal information to identify you. Unless you use a real VPN when you connect to the server running your "Serverless VPN".

Not sure I understand? Obviously there's no way to avoid everything?

It's the exact same with every VPN, every provider. They can promise no logs yet turn on logging if authorities request it.

At least you can reduce the amount of information you give.

Obviously there's no way to avoid everything?

Obviously, there is no way to avoid anything with this. It just adds one simple, easily traceable layer of indirection without any assurance of anonymity. It's not much different than using a free public proxy server in Mozambique.

https://www.proxynova.com/proxy-server-list/

They can promise no logs yet turn on logging if authorities request it.

Which most contractually agree not to do without a valid court order. In which case, authorities have to at least put forth the time, effort and money to submit a legally valid court order --- which can be substantial based on the jurisdiction.

> Which most contractually agree not to do without a valid court order. In which case, authorities have to at least put forth the time, effort and money to submit a legally valid court order --- which can be substantial based on the jurisdiction.

The same contracts where they also say they are able to change it at any time without any notice and a lot of them say they may request a court order, not that it's a must.

Also same in the case of a VPS provider? They can also say no logging unless court ordered.

> If the provider logs your IP when you connect, they have enough personal information to identify you.

Also they can't identify you based on it, it alone doesn't give them enough to identify you, they aren't able to access any subscriber info from your ISP, mobile carrier, etc.

they aren't able to access any subscriber info from your ISP, mobile carrier, etc.

https://www.reuters.com/article/legal/law-enforcement-can-ge...

I could so I did. I wrote one. completely anonymous, private and secure.

the price you pay for is: it is slow.

I think this used to just be called running software.

This is only somewhat related but this post got me wondering.

Can wireguard be used for a multi-wan setup/speed aggregation?

Probably. I'm not sure what you have in mind, but WireGuard would just be an intermediate network layer, so it would be up to however you're configuring multi-wan routing would still be apply/available.

Curious if it would work over ssl layer like shadowsocks for use in countries where vpns are banned.

Isn't OpenVPN free on AWS? (aside from AWS cost)

"seamlessly create a VPN server when you initiate a VPN session, and delete the server when you end the VPN session"

So it's not serverless.

"One license provides you 3 installations"

Fifty bucks for a Docker compose file and it's intentionally crippled to 3 installs?

As an extra special bonus, now my self-hosted ultra-private VPN has telemetry that phones home all the time to track every install??

No thanks.

> Serverless VPN Self-Hosted is a software you run on your own servers.

How does one write that with a straight face?

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