I have been torrenting for a long time but have never used a VPN. I just switched to a new ISP (1GB fiber) and I would feel better about using a VPN for torrenting so I don’t need to worry about getting ISP warnings. I’m not concerned with general web anonymity or security, so I’m just focusing on Torrent anonymity.
I may have 2 different Mac mini computers for torrenting. There are other people in my home with their own computers. So I’m thinking to just have the 2 bit torrent clients use the VPN. I know I will need to bind the VPN to the torrent client.
With no experience using a VPN I’d like to ask how things will work-
On the Mac minis that I’m Torrenting, once I bind the VPN to the torrent client, will ALL web traffic on that computer go through the VPN, or can I decide to have only the torrent client go through the VPN and do web browsing without VPN?
Will the VPN slow the internet speed of the Mac that I’m using for Torrenting?
Will it affect the speed of any other computers NOT using the VPN?
Do I need to be concerned about router compatibility for this? I’m using the ISP’s provided router right now.
On any OS, if you run a VPN, all traffic will get routed through the VPN. There may be some some more advanced ways to change that if you’re technical enough, but there’s 2 ways to only use VPN for torrenting:
Have a dedicated computer for VPN torrenting. Make sure the files are accessible to your other computers (store stuff on NAS, or shared drive.)
Run a virtual machine (VM) that’s set up just for torrenting and the VPN client. This is what I did. My NASBOX is just a Windows PC, but I have it running a Linux Mint VM. It’s set up to save torrents to the big drive on the NASBOX.
No need for that, just get a VPN that supports split tunneling so you can define what traffic goes through the VPN and what doesn’t. Proton supports it and port forwarding.
thank for the reply!
So regarding your method 1, having a dedicated computer for torrenting - that’s what I have, and the seeded files are on an external USB drive that is shared over the network. This computer is also my media server for playing the files that I’m seeding. Sometimes I play them directly from the seed computer out HDMI to my receiver, sometimes over the network. Is this a problem to play the seeded files? I think you’re saying to keep the seeded files separate from what you access at home?
Thanks I will look into it, split tunneling sounds like a very good feature. I was checking out AirVPN, but couldn’t tell if it supports split tunneling. The VPN Guide here says that Proton’s port forwarding is not easy to implement on Mac, so AirVPN might be the better service for me.