If I’m not mistaken, proxies and VPNs essentially do the same thing by routing your internet traffic through another device. Big difference is VPNs work on the operating system level whereas proxies work on the application level such as only re-routing traffic through a specific web browser. VPNs can also be encrypted where proxies are not.
So in other words VPNs are proxies on steroids.
Proxies and VPN servers/routers are extremely similar other than how VPNs handle the encrypted traffic on their side. You’re still proxying your requests to the internet through the VPN’s resources.
Not to be rude, but you are in fact mistaken. Unfortunately the Blizzard forums are an inefficient place to impart this kind of information, but I’ll do what I can.
If you use the internet through a proxy, your computer is only ever talking to the proxy server. the proxy server goes out and grabs whatever pages you asked for, then gives them back to you. In doing so, machines on the far side of the proxy connection only ever see the IP and machine fingerprints of the proxy server. It masks your identity. This is why proxies are used to dodge IP based banning, as you just hook up to a different proxy with a different IP and keep doing your thing.
VPNs, OTOH, are created at the router level. Local traffic, to include broadcast traffic that wouldn’t normally be forwarded, is encapsulated (and typically encrypted), and sent off to a specific router in what’s called a tunnel. This router will de-encapsulate the traffic, and send it out to a local network there. Thus, these 2 networks see each other’s local traffic, allowing them to treat each other as if they were local machines. Certain types of authentication and security measures rely on both sides residing in the same network, so This is an excellent way to harden your networks. However, it have very little to do with keeping yourself anonymous, just private.
Hope that helps.
Yes, but a VPN does this as well.
Say your computer connects to your work’s encrypted VPN. All of your internet traffic is then pointed towards the VPN server at your work. Your IP address will be different if you use an online tool such as ipchicken because internet requests are sent to your work VPN server which then makes the request out to the open internet normally and sends that back down the encrypted tunnel.
I have in fact done this with my work VPN. It changes what the internet believes to be my IP address because my computer isn’t actually the device making the requests. It’s requesting that another device does this on its behalf through an encrypted tunnel.
Yes. This is a feature that a VPN would have that proxies do not. It allows you to communicate with your work’s local network as if you were actually connected locally. And being connected locally means your internet traffic is re-routed which changes your public IP address.
I suppose an ISP could determine what VPN you were connecting to since it needs that information to be able to pass data through, but could they not also determine that if you were using a proxy? And if they determine the VPN you’re routing through they would have no way to make a distinction between your traffic through the VPN and someone else’s.
We seem to have reached the point in the discussion in which we’re saying the same things with different words. I was defining how they’re different whereas what you’ve described is what happens when both technologies are in use simultaneously.
Chuck is more right than you here so it’s hilarious you are being degrading to this forum and Chuck. Leads me to believe you have a simple IT background, or fresh out of school, and are Googling for other knowledge to fill in the gaps. What you broke down is a VPN specific to activities such as appearing like a local computer on a network. Useful for stuff like connecting to a development network while at home on your personal computer. That’s entirely different than how something like NordVPN works. Most public VPNs that cater to the masses for “security” are literally just beefed up proxies and nothing more. Come on dude…
I guess I wasn’t aware of any VPNs that function without connecting to a VPN server to change your public IP address as a proxy would 
I suppose that would be the result if you connected to your work VPN while you were already physically there.
never said it wasn’t 
He’s googling stuff, man. Public VPNs offered to the masses are just beefed up proxies.
Which is fine as long as you can effectively interpret the information you’re reading.
Oh, I know it’s fine. It’s what developers/IT folk do 80-90% of their time.
Idk what I’d do without stackoverflow 
You said it perfectly. I would prefer a coworker that can understand official documentation or stackoverflow examples/responses insanely well, but not remember anything outside of the basic syntax for languages than someone who memorized a ton of syntax, jargon, etc but has a tough time understanding docs.
Eh. I think his explanations are rather more spot on than not, simply because most VPN clients allow local connections to NOT go through the VPN tunnel, whereas all connections go through proxy.
So we have a difference, right there. But yea, people use big box VPN as proxy, not VPN.
But because it still allows local networking, it is better than proxying, for most users.
Depending on your client, this CAN be true but is not mandatory to VPN functionality.
If a VPN push all of your traffic through the VPN tunnel first, then yes. Your IP will change because of either the new proxy, OR because you’re NATing through an entirely different router. If it only takes the tunnel for locations on the far side of the VPN, this doesn’t happen. Again, depends on your VPN setup.
There are multiple things at play in this paragraph. To keep things on track with controlling a botnet, there’s a point to which it may not even matter which type of service is being used, as all a snort message would see is encrypted traffic, which is not readily crackable even to ISPs or the like: there’s no secret backdoor to this. But they can still see the endpoints of the tunnel quite easily, and pick up the investigation from there.
I’m using one right now. The client installed an entirely different set of IPs and both of them still get traffic, I just ran a sniffer to test it. This exact post will skip right past the VPN.
Triggered.
My first thought was that they bragged and someone snitched.
Someone who is going to DDoS such a visible target is going to tend not to be someone who can keep a secret.
I mean…I guess if you’re using Babby’s First VPN that forgot to encrypt itself. Otherwise the ISP will be able to tell you’re using a VPN, but not the contents.
Thats why you only use a NO LOGS vpn! The ones that cost $$$$$
Yup. Tmobile started throttling tether speeds down to .5 mbs from their normal 25mbs unless you pay extra every month for a “tethering” plan. Never had this issue before and been with them for almost 15 years. VPN it is.