Sensible Topic SeedBoxes VS VPS

[calisto]

there was a great guide on the plex fourm that i looked through but i cant find it.

here is some more info on the process.
Plex Cloud vs VPS - why we went with a VPS

Thank you

 

[Grimeire]

The VPN will only hide stuff from your ISP, it wont hide it from the VPS supplier, as they have direct access to the box. Not sure if that's what you mean grimerie?

Same with seedbox, you use FTP to hide what you're doing from the ISP.

It will stop the provider getting data protection violation notices so if you aren't allowed download torrents they wont know you are.

A VPN will encrypt all traffic leaving your device that is going through the VPN. Without a VPN all your data can be seen by the provider unless encrypted. But even if its encrypted it can be seen it depends on if the data centres is using there own local encryption between endpoints. A vpn will prevent them seeing your data no matter what. I work in cyber security and our product is used in data centres among other places to provide NIDS and HIDS.

Well if you are using FTP, that is a mistake. FTP doesn't encrypt nothing. U should be using SFTP, SCP to name a few.
Just use ftp and run TCPdump/wireshark and you will be able to see everything in the packets. FTP does not encrypt data and if you connecting to a FTP server over the internet anyone that is snooping on the packets at any of the hops can see the password/user name for the FTP connection and the data being sent. We have customers that are ISPs so ISPs snoop on your data.

Financial viability doesn’t come into it. They can run a server at any spec required. Supply and demand.
A VPS is inherently less secure than a physical server, all advice for privacy advocates not to use a VPS.

Financial viability does come into it why would they sell something at a loss. a seedbox for $4pm for 100mb up/down is not something someone would sell unless it costs them less. or unless there customer is buying vasts sums of something else that can offset the lost of this.

This definitely isnt the case with seedboxes as most people only have the seedbox with the provider so there is nothing to offset the service loss if they were making a loss.

A VPS can be less secure but that is only because there is extra layers that can be vulnerable. If a VPS is configured correctly and its host is, then it can be just as secure as a Physical machine

all advice for privacy advocates not to use a VPS.

Thats is because you do not own the data as it is stored on someone else infrastructure. I'm not sure of the laws in this case but i would assume if you are renting a physical server you do not own the data either.

This is probably wrong but the last time i checked the laws(3+ years) regarding cloud data anything you put on icloud, gdrive etc you do not actually have the rights to.

 

[janobi]

It will stop the provider getting data protection violation notices so if you aren't allowed download torrents they wont know you are.

A VPN will encrypt all traffic leaving your device that is going through the VPN. Without a VPN all your data can be seen by the provider unless encrypted. But even if its encrypted it can be seen it depends on if the data centres is using there own local encryption between endpoints. A vpn will prevent them seeing your data no matter what. I work in cyber security and our product is used in data centres among other places to provide NIDS and HIDS.

A VPN will only encrypt traffic between the endpoints. The supplier can still see all data on that server/LUN/Volume/Aggregate, they'll have their own monitoring and management systems to do exactly that. VPN isn't going to stop them doing this, as it will be unencrypted after the endpoint, unless you're saying to have a VPN endpoint on the server itself?

And whilst it can be sniffed, it cannot be read as it's encrypted, unless you're using MD5 or something, then it can be cracked pretty easily.

What product if you dont mind me asking? I work for a large MSP and we run our own cloud, and also AWS/Azure services, our setup is very different, but completely secure.

Well if you are using FTP, that is a mistake. FTP doesn't encrypt nothing. U should be using SFTP, SCP to name a few.
Just use ftp and run TCPdump/wireshark and you will be able to see everything in the packets. FTP does not encrypt data and if you connecting to a FTP server over the internet anyone that is snooping on the packets at any of the hops can see the password/user name for the FTP connection and the data being sent. We have customers that are ISPs so ISPs snoop on your data.

Yes indeed you should use SFTP (Secure FTP), as standard. I was just using the generic term FTP, ALL ISPS snoop, they have to. DPI is a must, IGMP snooping is a must, we have it on our systems for our clients, unless they specifically ask for it to be removed. But with a well configured RBAC network, then access can be controlled very easily. ACLS, firewalls, IDS, IPS there are various ways of securing the network.

Financial viability does come into it why would they sell something at a loss. a seedbox for $4pm for 100mb up/down is not something someone would sell unless it costs them less. or unless there customer is buying vasts sums of something else that can offset the lost of this.

This definitely isnt the case with seedboxes as most people only have the seedbox with the provider so there is nothing to offset the service loss if they were making a loss.

A VPS can be less secure but that is only because there is extra layers that can be vulnerable. If a VPS is configured correctly and its host is, then it can be just as secure as a Physical machine

But this was the point I was making earlier, in that a VPS isn't as secure straight off the bat. You've obviously got experience at securing boxes, Linux, windows et al. As have I, but joe bloggs wouldn't necessarily. Its like all the data breaches that are happening at AWS because people dont realise their data is on the internet, unless they secure it correctly.

I disagree on the costings, but I see your POV.

Thats is because you do not own the data as it is stored on someone else infrastructure. I'm not sure of the laws in this case but i would assume if you are renting a physical server you do not own the data either.

This is probably wrong but the last time i checked the laws(3+ years) regarding cloud data anything you put on icloud, gdrive etc you do not actually have the rights to.

Not entirely true about owning the data. It's still your data, no matter who's kit it is on. Megaupload is a prime example of this, with customer data behind held hostage by the US government, even though they dont own that data.

 

[Grimeire]

A VPN will only encrypt traffic between the endpoints.

Didn't i just say that in previous response? My point is using a VPN to prevent the provider getting data protection violation notices so they wont know from looking at your traffic what you are doing so if they say NO torrent allowed you can just use the VPN. As you said regardless of what you do they can always just look at what's stored on your device, but without the VPN they can see this by getting alarms from their NIDS/HIDS what is going on without even having to look at your device.


i think we will just have to call this a stalemate. ill send the company info in a PM

 

[janobi]

Didn't i just say that in previous response?

Sorry perhaps that got lost in translation. I was reading it as that you were advocating using a VPN as it would hide your traffic. I didn't realise you were referring to not getting warnings and such. My apologies.

NIDS/HIDS will only be received if configured, some companies dont configure them at all

 

[Grimeire]

NIDS/HIDS will only be received if configured, some companies dont configure them at all

No truer words have been said dont know how many times i log into customers systems and see they dont have NIDS running. Why buy expenisve cyber sercuity software and not have a basic feature like NIDS running? I learned long ago not to ever point it out as most don't even know what NIDS is.

 

[Grimeire]

I seen some seedboxes come with Plex so it is possible. I think the seedboxes are more aimed at users without configuration experience.

I was looking into moving my plex to a VPS recently for cost reasons. Using the unlimited gdrive it would be cheaper to run than my current system and i wouldn't have to worry about drives failing in the future.

I'm going to do a test run soon.

Finally got time to do this. Runs great but the VPS I am using is not the best spec so can not hack more than 1 transcode at a time but has coped fine with 4+ direct streams at once.

Definitely the way to go if you have slow internet and you dont have to worry about data loss since it is all stored in gdrive.

 

[gadgethome]

Finally got time to do this. Runs great but the VPS I am using is not the best spec so can not hack more than 1 transcode at a time but has coped fine with 4+ direct streams at once.

Definitely the way to go if you have slow internet and you dont have to worry about data loss since it is all stored in gdrive.

How much a month are you paying for your setup?
I'm using Plexguide + gdrive and using a vps for around 7 eur a month.

 

[Grimeire]

wow thats cheap. who you with do you mind me asking.

I should say the host and not VPS. I am paying 15 a month but have 2 dedicated IPs for that and access to the host so I can install whatever OS i want. I installed ESXI and have a number of VMs running on the within ESXI.

never heard of plexguide. It looks like it would of saved me a load of work.

 

[gadgethome]

I'm using netcup and pay quarterly as its cheaper.
netcup GmbH - Root Server

Also if you leave the site in German as they seem to offer it cheaper than EU.
I also bought google team drive on ebay cheap to store everything on.

 

[Grimeire]

I'm using netcup and pay quarterly as its cheaper.
netcup GmbH - Root Server

Also if you leave the site in German as they seem to offer it cheaper than EU.
I also bought google team drive on ebay cheap to store everything on.

thanks
I will check them out. Seems to be a similar spec to mine but a lot cheaper

 

[janobi]

seedhost.eu I use, again they will do VPS pretty cheaply.