I have used Mullvad VPN for the past few years for torrenting and it has served me very well, but I am considering moving over to AirVPN since people keep saying that Port Forwarding is highly recommended and Mullvad recently discontinued their support for port forwarding.
However, from what I understand, Port Forwarding involves opening up a port on my internet connection to the outside world. As such, does Port Forwarding increases the risk of my IP getting leaked and my torrenting activity being flagged by my ISP? For clarification, I have already bound my client (qBittorrent) to my VPN connection.
You’re mixing up port forwarding as a feature in a VPN provider, with the port forwarding you configure in your router/firewall when you want to expose things in your home to the internet. These are 2 different things. When you port forward in a VPN, you’re allowing a port to the VPN connection and your VPN server IP, not your real home IP.
Port forwarding had no effect on DL speeds. By the way, I also just made the switch from mullvad to AirVPN and absolutely love it. Highly recommend.
Nothing about airVPN is as polished or clean as mullvad, but all I really need is a wire guard config file and I’m good to go. So I just use their website to generate those and that’s all I need. Works like a charm.