Look for the fastest server of a list and connect to it.

[thaenan]

Hello,

I was wondering if it would be possible to screen through a list of servers to try and find the fastest one (lowest ping, lowest load?), then connect to it.

Have any of you already worked on something like it? I was thinking about a shell script to find the fastest one and set the right environment variables. The custom script would then be run before openvpn in the process.

Thanks!

[pkishino]

this should go as a suggestion here:
https://github.com/haugene/vpn-configs-contrib
as this is highly provider dependent

[pkishino]

@haugene can you please enabled discussions on that repo as well, then we can transfer the discussion there.

[haugene]

Will do 👍

[haugene]

Good idea. Lowest ping should be quite easy to script. Another benefit of that is that we would actually ping a bunch of servers before trying to connect so we would avoid trying (and failing) to connect to offline servers.

Lowest load is a tougher nut. I don't think we can know the load before connecting. Some providers might have an API but that would require custom code for each provider. If we were to connect to a bunch of servers and do a bandwidth test for each until we chose the final one, that would take a lot of time. The image is not set up for that anyways. We release control to OpenVPN when we connect to the server, so we would have to change a lot to do something like that.

I moved it to the vpn-configs-contrib repo @pkishino . But now I'm thinking that this probably has to be done in the image repo if anywhere? I'm moving it back for now 🙈

[thaenan]

Hi @haugene,

Lowest ping would definitely be great!
The load is also considered by my VPN provider (IPVanish) as a criterion for choosing the "Best Server" to connect when using their application, that's why I mentioned it. But as you said, not very easy to get if we have to connect to each and one of the servers of a list.

Anyway, thank you very much for your interest in the idea and for the great script.

Cheers

[pkishino]

Yeah, no, I don’t think this is something we should have in this repo. Because some providers have api for this and others not etc I think this should be up to each provider(maintainer) to implement a script for this.. as these things probably will change etc I for sure don’t see this as a container responsibility..

…

On Sun, Sep 5, 2021 at 8:37 Kristian Haugene ***@***.***> wrote: Good idea. Lowest ping should be quite easy to script. Another benefit of that is that we would actually ping a bunch of servers before trying to connect so we would avoid trying (and failing) to connect to offline servers. Lowest load is a tougher nut. I don't think we can know the load before connecting. Some providers might have an API but that would require custom code for each provider. If we were to connect to a bunch of servers and do a bandwidth test for each until we chose the final one, that would take a lot of time. The image is not set up for that anyways. We release control to OpenVPN when we connect to the server, so we would have to change a lot to do something like that. I moved it to the vpn-configs-contrib repo @pkishino <https://github.com/pkishino> . But now I'm thinking that this probably has to be done in the image repo if anywhere? I'm moving it back for now 🙈 — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1938 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AA7OFYWBTNODPD4EOEKRJ4LUAKUUFANCNFSM5DNYKI4A> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>.

[haugene]

Also a good point. I guess I figured the only way to do this "once and for all" is to do it in the main repo. But this could and maybe should be a per-provider thing.

We do have the if [[ -x $VPN_PROVIDER_HOME/configure-openvpn.sh ]]; then ... block in openvpn/start.sh today, so it could actually be implemented in the provider config right now without any changes in the main repo.