Frequently Asked Questions

Instant answers to our most commonly asked questions

Answers to Common Questions

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What is a VPN and How Do They Work?

You can introduce the category and tell your users about it here

VPN stands for 'Virtual Private Network'.

It gives you a private, encrypted internet connection that hides the location of your computer from websites, hackers and others who might attempt to monitor your online activities or steal your information. A VPN hides your true IP address and location. The encrypted connection protects your privacy and security - especially on public wifi or mobile networks. Your online history, passwords, and communications will be hidden behind OctaneVPN.

To websites and other parties, you will appear to be at whatever city you choose for your gateway server connection. Your actual IP address and real location will be hidden. Your Internet service provider will see only encrypted data, limiting their ability to monitor your activity and place limits on your bandwidth based on what protocols you are using.

It shouldn't much if any. Generally, if you choose a gateway location reasonably close to you, there should be little to no speed difference. If you choose a gateway location that is far across the world from your real location, you may notice a dip in speed. We do not throttle or cap you connection speed. Your ISP connection and its internet internconnects also play a major role in your overall Internet speed.

Reason vary greatly, but most users fall into one or more of these categories:

1) They need or desire greater privacy and security when connecting to the internet. For some this means securing public Wifi. For others, security and privacy are paramount for the communications they make.

2) They are located behind some kind of firewall that restricts access to the full internet. This might be an education or corporate firewall for some. For others, it may be the country they live in.

3) Users want to appear to be located somewhere else to the internet. For travelers this might mean being able to access their US content accounts when traveling. For others it means unlocking regional content.

4) Let's face it, governments have advanced monitoring capabilities. Many people believe in limited government and take steps to ensure that governments are not able to see what they do online.

Yes. All relatively modern devices that connect to the internet are designed with the expectation that a VPN will be used. We have many guides available with detailed setup instructions for MS Windows, Apple OS X, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, Linux, Routers and NAS devices. In addition, if your device supports OpenVPN or IPsec, it will work.

Generally, yes, but not all routers have VPN capabilities. It used to be only commerical routers or routers flashed with custom firmware could work with a VPN. That is beginning to change. Most mid-to-high end consumer routers now support VPN out of the box. If you are not sure about your router, check with us and we will let you know.

Probably not. Normally, no adjustments are needed, but if you run into something unexpected, let our support team know and they can walk you through it.

No. My mom did it and her tech skills are limited to turning on a computer. Our guides are detailed and our software setup is automatic.

We support OpenVPN and IPsec protocols.

By default we offer dynamic IP addresses. This ensures when you connect to our servers, you get a rotating IP address for additional privacy and security. We do have the capability to assign static IPs if your situation requires one. Contact us if that is you.

No. We do not monitor or restrict what Internet protocols you use when connected with our service except we block outgoing SMTP for spam control reasons. For technical reasons, we suggest choosing non-US gateways if you use a torrent client. Washington, DC, Amsterdam and Frankfurt locations are optimized for Usenet traffic - we are in the same data centers as the big providers. What about P2P? No restrictions. For other reasons its usually better to use non-US gateways for P2P.

The usual suspects, but we also believe in anonymity when desired. PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover and their cousins. We accept Bitcoin, Litecoin and Etherium as well.?

You can enter whatever you like. We generally only need enough information for credit card payers to satisfy the card validation requirements of the merchant gateway. This is usually street number, postal code, country and sometimes last name. What goes in the rest of the fields is up to you.

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