I’m not sure if this is posted already, or if everyone is aware, but I stumbled upon this a few months ago.
I’m sure most of ya’ll are aware of Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1, the app that claimed to reduce DNS lookup times and encrypt them as well. Last April, they also introduced a VPN built into the app, called “Warp / Warp+”. Warp will be coming to PC and MacOS soon but this post is for anyone who wants to try it out now. I’m seeing a lot of posts about JioFibre filtering connections, so maybe this could help them.
However, YMMV. Cloudflare has peered with most ISPs as well as services like google. So if your ISP isn’t peered with Google already, you might get significant download speed improvements from Youtube, for instance. That being said, there are several factors come into play here. Your download speeds may either improve or get significantly worse. The same applies for ping / latency as well. It’s upto you to try and see if it’s any use to you.
So Cloudflare uses Wireguard, an open source VPN solution, behind the scenes. Wireguard requires a “profile”, that basically contains configuration information.
- Install WireGuard, we’ll use it later.
- Download the WGCF executable from https://github.com/ViRb3/wgcf. You’ll find the download in the releases tab. (wgcf_1.0.6_windows_amd64.exe for Windows x64).
- To make this simple, copy the executable into an empty folder.
- Start an instance of command prompt, and navigate to this folder.
- Once done, create a cloudflare account by typing: >!wgcf_1.0.6_windows_amd64.exe register!<
- Next you need to generate a profile for Wireguard, run: >!wgcf_1.0.6_windows_amd64.exe generate!<
- You should now have a file called “wgcf-profile.conf” in the same folder.
- Start wireguard.
- At the bottom left, you should see an option to “Add tunnel”. Click it and you should have an option to import wgcf-profile.conf.
- Click the “Activate” Button. The VPN should now connect, if everything went well. Head over to speedtest.net and check your ISP name, should be Cloudflare.
There is no way to select a server, unfortunately. It selects the closest (and fastest) server possible. For instance, most of the time I get connected to the Mumbai server (while in Mumbai), but occasionally I get connected to their Nagpur server during peak times. Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a guaranteed solution. May or may not help. Try it out!
P.S People who have purchased a Warp+ subscription, can also use an even faster version of the VPN, if they are able to export certain details from the app on their phones. Refer to the github page.
P.P.S This also works on Linux and MacOS, pretty much the same way, however the linux wireguard client has no GUI, I think.
