Yo ho me hearties,
I was reading through Servarr wiki’s VPN Guide and saw this callout:
For most users, secure DNS is sufficient instead of VPNs and fixes indexer connectivity issues without the complexity and problems of VPN setups
Are VPNs no longer the recommended practice? I was under the impression a VPN was pretty much required for sharing stuff in a copyright-sensitive country. I’d be delighted if I could simplify my app stack.
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no, you shouldn’t use a VPN with any Servarr app. you use the vpn with the download client.
Sonarr doesn’t do any downloading, so that’s why it doesn’t specifically need a VPN.
The VPN is needed for the torrent client. If you use it with the arr programs, you will probably be blocked by anything that’s behind cloudflare.
Glad to see I wasn’t out-of-the-loop. That’s what I figured, but the little callout in the wiki had me questioning.
Thanks for the sanity check
Also: VPN is only really needed for torrenting, and that’s not the only way to pirate stuff. Usenet is perfectly fine to use without a VPN, since it’s encrypted (TLS/SSL if you configure it right) and other parties can’t just join your P2P network to see what you’re doing.
I still use one with Usenet, because why not.
Worse performance, not everything works, and depending on the country you live in and which VPN provider you pick a VPN can actually be a downgrade in privacy since a second commercial entity now has the ability to look at all your traffic and distil valuable data from it to sell. The better VPN providers say they don’t do this (and some probably don’t) but a lot of them will definitely do so.
If the traffic is already encrypted, then it shouldn’t matter that your VPN provider can see it.
I agree about performance, but for my *arr stack it’s not something I care about too much since I’m never actively waiting on a download to complete.
If you only route your encrypted Usenet traffic through it then sure, the privacy argument is moot, you’re just spending money for worse performance without any benefit.
But way too many people route all their traffic through a VPN under the assumption that it improves privacy somehow, which often isn’t the case.
I think you need to look at the points above, where it lists the cases where VPN is recommended:
When VPNs are Needed Highly Restrictive Countries: China or Australia where internet access is heavily restricted ISP Throttling: If your ISP specifically throttles or blocks BitTorrent traffic Legal Requirements: If local laws require VPN use for P2P/BitTorrent activities
Not sure where you’re located, but in most of the USA, not using a VPN runs you the risk of at least getting a nastygram from your ISP. How much that means to you depends on how worried you are about getting your service disconnected or sued by the owner of whatever you’re seeding. For me personally, a VPN is a no-brainer.
ETA: I may have missed the subtler point of your post. I personally do not have my *arr apps behind a VPN, only my torrenting app. I think that is what the wiki is specifically addressing.
As far as I know the arr suite tools do not download things. They scour publicly available pages for torrent links and meta data, so they don’t really need to be behind a VPN. The download client it all ends in should definitely be behind a VPN though
Maybe for troubleshooting? Like they say for Gluetun part, and Prowlarr indexers needing more configurations. I think it’s recommended to use a vpn in most countries.
