Linking together multiple VPNs and with randomness?

[drmike]

Wanted to return to this as I hesitantly tried sshuttle for the first time a few hours ago. Without getting technical, I don't like how its nesting functions as a single point of failure (thereby perma-infantilizing subsequent connections and putting them at risk). If the goal is connecting via randomized multiplicity, why would anyone want one nest along the continuum to...

Sshuttle is easy, but it's damn slow.   Suitable for light browsing, text, etc.  Not suitable for file transfers and big data (will work, just super slow for folks use to more throughput).


Nesting in theory isn't putting anything at risk.  If a an upper nest gets offlined, then all the nested thereunder should cease to function.


It gets wonky on a single machine and more risk of suck a fail potential though.


I isolate things currently with a VPN gateway on center of the network.  This means  everything goes through there to get to the 'net.  If it's down, everything is.  On local machines I run whatever additionally depending on use.   That might be ToR on some machines or similar, that might be SSHuttle for spot nesting.  Usually it's another VPN instance though.


Obviously performance is an issue, so by tiering things, gives performance where wanted and slacky throughput and latency where higher level of concern applied.

 

[HN-Matt]

Nesting in theory isn't putting anything at risk.  If a an upper nest gets offlined, then all the nested thereunder should cease to function.

I was thinking of it the other way around. If a nest goes offline (upper or lower), in theory it should have no effect on the connectivity of any other nest. Shouldn't each nest be capable of functioning autonomously?

 

[drmike]

I was thinking of it the other way around. If a nest goes offline (upper or lower), in theory it should have no effect on the connectivity of any other nest. Shouldn't each nest be capable of functioning autonomously?

Well it would be nice to have then be all independent, but nature of this is that if upper level breaks that cascades the outage downward or inward if you will.  It's a parent-child-child of child type arrangement.


Clearly this is a PITA approach where bandwidth is very bad and connections drop lots or where high latency is the norm.


Frankly with the amount of crap behavior, monitoring and even  data leaking by say 9 out of 10 sites:
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/9-out-of-10-of-the-internets-top-websites-are-leaking-your-data


Plus toss on that all the hacks and outright leaks of data that can be inter-related.  Pfft, unique password per site?  How about unique username per site, anonymized content and tons of IP addresses

 

[HN-Matt]

Well it would be nice to have then be all independent, but nature of this is that if upper level breaks that cascades the outage downward or inward if you will.  It's a parent-child-child of child type arrangement.

Right, hence my usage of perma-infantilizing—the poor birds can never leave the nest!

Maybe 'anonymous' and autonomous are too conceptually contradictory to be conflated at a theoretico-practical level. I guess it would require something like an [anony/autono]mous quantum superposition of sorts.