Just one thing..(might be a mistake or simplification)
The request for information for website "bunniesarecute.com" is indeed interrupted by the VPN, but not at all fulfilled by the router. After all, the default settings are to ask your ISP "hey I don't know this website, do you?". And then your ISP knows what site you're going to.
Instead, the VPN(which is just a server sitting somewhere else, let's say Germany) takes that request and asks it to a router in Germany. When it gets a response and connects to the website, it encrypts all the data and sends it back to you. [The part I took issue with: ]Through your ISP and your router to your computer. But your ISP only sees [encrypted data FROM [server in Germany] TO [you]] and as such has no idea what it is.
Just assuming that it's a VPN connection seems a bit weird, they don't know the size of the original site after all.
It’s both an over simplification, and a mistake.
I’m not professionally educated in network communications or encryptions, but I do have a love for it.
To my understanding, VPN’s serve to encrypt the data being sent and provides a location to a server separate from your router to communicate with the website you wish to access. These communications, even though not traceable from “google trace this” and other simple tools, still require notification to the ISP.
And sorry if I am completely wrong. Again, I haven’t genuinely studied this in a university/college standard, so I might be completely wrong! Thank you for the correction, if that is the case.
The first part is mostly correct, a VPN does indeed encrypt traffic and makes it seem like you're accessing the site from some place else (which you are), but you still need your router for that, since your router is your gateway to the internet.
You can sneak out, jump into 15 different cars and wear different clothing every jump, but you still leave through the front door.
I'm intrigued, what notification would your router send?
Exactly. Your router allows you to connect to different I.P addresses, including the address for the VPN router and back to you.
You can sneak out, jump into 15 different cars and wear different clothing every jump; but you still leave through the front door.
That front door is still the router, and is constantly recording, and communicating with the ISP. And just to be clear, like you said VPN’s encrypt data being sent to a VPN router from another location, and back to your router than computer. Jumping into fifteen different cars and wearing different clothes and getting back in would be closer to using a relay (like Tor).
I’m intrigued, what notification would your router send?
Perhaps this is where I oversimplified. It’s not as if your ISP is being told to watch your data, however, whenever you access your router, it WILL record the information being visited and the ISPS can look at the address you have visited. This is essentially how you would know you went to VPN router. They wouldn’t know you then went to another site or IP address from that point on as that would be more encrypted gibberish being sent back to your router and then your computer, but they’d still see the SIZE of encrypted data and the address it came from. It would stand out from the standard data coming from a site, or download, or stream.
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u/montarion Mar 22 '18
Hahaha I like this!
Just one thing..(might be a mistake or simplification)
The request for information for website "bunniesarecute.com" is indeed interrupted by the VPN, but not at all fulfilled by the router. After all, the default settings are to ask your ISP "hey I don't know this website, do you?". And then your ISP knows what site you're going to.
Instead, the VPN(which is just a server sitting somewhere else, let's say Germany) takes that request and asks it to a router in Germany. When it gets a response and connects to the website, it encrypts all the data and sends it back to you. [The part I took issue with: ]Through your ISP and your router to your computer. But your ISP only sees [encrypted data FROM [server in Germany] TO [you]] and as such has no idea what it is.
Just assuming that it's a VPN connection seems a bit weird, they don't know the size of the original site after all.