GekkoP wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 12:12 pm
Understood. I don't see myself doing anything that requires super-serious protection. However, Italian politics have been getting worse year after year since I was born and judging by how messy they are right now, it's better to expect even something worse around the corner.
Same goes for almost anywhere else in the world, I reckon. What we do online that's legal today might be a crime tomorrow, so your mindset is a good one. I read somewhere that Italy recently banned the use of Google Analytics, though I don't know if that's only for official/government use or a blanket ban. So at least you guys have made a small step in the right direction (although I think Google Play Services is a bigger threat). That and you still have great food.
GekkoP wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 12:12 pm
I've recently changed ISP provider to something finally offering decent fiber optic infrastructure, but since this is pretty much new things it's hard to trust them. Sure, my connection has never been so good, but they had breakage in Northern Italy twice in a week last month, and by now I've learnt pretty well how Italians care about their work. Not entirely their fault, I know, but still, having a backup for packet loss and latency cannot be bad.
Traceroutes help. Can't remember if MTR is installed by default on Ubuntu. I'll use that as an example...
To check for egress peering issues between you and your desired Mullvad server (using it7 as an example), while disconnected from VPN do;
Code: Select all
mtr --aslookup it7-wireguard.mullvad.net
or
mtr -wz it7-wireguard.mullvad.net
To check for ingress peering issues do the same while connected to that specific Mullvad server, just using your home IP (meaning the address that appears on the second hop in the previous output, assuming the first value is the typical 192.168.x.x router IP) instead.
From those outputs, you can determine if there's any packet loss or high ping, and can cross reference the guilty ASN number on a site like
www.peeringdb.com to determine what peering provider or internet exchange/escrow your ISP has a deal with and whether they're cheaping out (based or how much bandwidth the related port allows).
You can also test data flow between two Mullvad servers you intend to use multi-hop with. Eg; single-hop connect to an Italian server and do a traceroute to a Swedish server, then single-hop connect to that Swedish server and do a traceroute to the Italian server. Not really necessary though since most datacenter-to-datacenter paths are well optimized.
Mullvad's server page on their website can be made to show just their owned servers, so if you ever find the need to multi-hop, best to use one of those as the first hop.
EdiT:
Holy crap that came out longer than I realized.
Meh, just think of it as me leaving a long note-to-self, because I'll certainly forget all this one day in the near future, just like how I've completely forgotten pacman or dnf syntax, or even what I had for lunch yesterday. Guess I'll blame Long Covid like everyone else.