VLAN\VPN discussion thread - aka "why hamachi sucks"

[Carpenter Trout]

I wanted to make an "help me" kind of thread, but instead I'd like to talk about a topic which is now criminally underappreciated: Virtual Lan, better known as VLAN (or Lan VPNs, or just "VPNs").
Nowadays when one talks about a VPN it's usually referring to the proxy VPNs (Such as NordVPN or ToR); but there's also another side of the this which nowadays is almost never talked about, but it was quite a bit of a talking point back when Tunngle was a thing (around the early 2010s)

What I'm referring to is the ability to port forward games that supports LAN (or don't, in the case of Tunngle), for example Minecraft, and I need to use this as an example since it's probably the one that's the easiest to explain.
I'm not too knowledgeable on the subject, so I hope you will excuse my poorly explanations. I will update this message whenever I get some better info.

Anyway, a quick example would be:

Pretend it's 2010 and you're young Ben Dover and want to host a Minecraft server for to play with your friend Mike Hunt. You can of course join by just starting up the mc_server.jar, and then starting up the game and joining at the ip "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" (with or without a port).
But of course your friend wouldn't be able to join because both IPs are internal names and yadda yadda. You, Ben, don't know what the hell a port-forward is, nor how to do it; or maybe you do know but your router doesn't let you do it or there are other problems.
What you needed was a program like Tunngle (~2011 - 2018 ) or Hamachi, but for this example we'll go with Hamachi. You download that thing, and installed everything it requires (usually a virtual lan adapter - AKA: 'VLAN'), then start it up, press the program's power button, create a network, and your friend joins the network. After which you go into the server-properties file and change the ip line from "'0.0.0.0" to whatever your hamachi's IPv4 was, for example "217.420.069.007".
Now your friend can finally join in and you'll have the most idiotic time of your life spamming herobrine altars and drawing penises.

Here's a quick and bad rundown of VLAN\VPNs situation from 2017 to 2019:
• Hamachi is now a shithole and doesn't work half the time, besides, it became slower resulting in games where the lowest ping was 250 ms;
• I didn't had much like with it's clone, Radmin VPN.
• Tunngle closed due to 'gdpr', which despite what some reddit users are crying, it really just comes down to selling users' data without consent and probably they just wanted an excuse to shut it down, because a little bird told me that they were going to face legal issues very soon;
• EvolveHQ, which was a great alternative to the two previously mentioned programs is now down because their developers, echobit, being idiots and instead of looking for partners\ads they were lazily hoping that their users would pay the bills with a premium feature which gave nothing if not a slightly better voice chat and IP that don't change in their networking system

Spoiler: stupid rant

besides, it was also very intensive on lower end pcs. The devs had already closed another program called 'lanbridger' before, for the same reason, and tried to capitalize on the lack of decent VLAN making a subscription-based program's kickstarter called "bowstring", which failed miserably because of their absurd pricing. (40$ a month? for something I'd use twice a year? lol no. Not when some other alternatives still exists, such as port-forwarding or zerotier one).
Also, why didn't those at player.me also tried to also integrate evolve's party system into their terrible bloatware? what good can a program that's a raptr clone do? "but it tracks your game stats",because that's a selling point now.

Programs that are still alive:
Softether VPN is just a VPN, not a vlan, it can work as vlan only if you're really want to;
Gameranger only works on few specified games. There's another program which is trying to copy it, called "rankedgaming", but it only works for Warcraft 3;
Garena\Garena+ became a discord wannabe and deleted the option of hosting games, they made an external program called "Garena Lan Games", but it doesn't work anymore;
ZeroTier seems to be pretty good, although you need to use their site for most of the settings;
There was another decent one called "playhide vpn", but it no longer works;
Wippien is pretty old, and it's more of a MSN alternative, but it also uses something called "WeOnlyDo wodVPN", which allows users to use it like hamachi. You need to register with an xmpp [wikipedia];
Radmin VPN (maybe you'll have more luck than me), it works just like hamachi but without the 8 clients per network limitation, and it's allegedly adware-free;
yggdrasil (suggested by don yagon);

I wanted to talk about this with you, because it seems that there's an ever decreasing interest into keeping old games alive, especially when it comes to multiplayer games that don't use steam. I know that 3/4 of the user base of these programs are either pirates or oldfags which also learnt how to port forward the games they're interested in. But still, it was nice when there was the option of quickly hosting a quake game without the need of depending some from chinese potato server or opening the ports (especially since it's not really an option sometimes).

 

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What do you see as the problem with ZeroTier? I haven't used it for gaming, but as far as use on Windows in general, my primary issues there have been related to firewall rules (which you should be able to take care of by whitelisting what you're using on there), or Windows getting confused about what the primary network connection is when you are connecting over a wireless connection and have ZeroTier and another VPN connection or three that you regularly take up and down (a Windows networking problem not a ZeroTier one, resolvable by disabling and enabling the wireless connection).

 

[Coffee Shits]

I used Hamachi back in the day. Started it up right next to Xfire.

In my experience, it worked decently, depending on the game. My experience with playing multiplayer shooters over it was that if your friends were geographically close (2-6 hops) with the broadband of the day you'd have minimal moments of "I shot you in the FACE why aren't you DEAD" followed by getting blasted by a guy who teleported in from around the corner.

Pretend it's 2010 and you're young Timmy Rogers and want to host a Minecraft server for to play with your friend Dick Alan. You can of course join by just starting up the mc_server.jar (if you had an IQ higher than 2), and then starting up the game and joining at the ip "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" (with or without a port).
But of course your friend Dick wouldn't be able to join because both IPs are internal names and yadda yadda. You, Timmy, don't know what the hell a port-forward is, nor how to do it; or maybe you do know but your router doesn't let you do it or there are other problems.
What you needed was a program like Tunngle (~2011 - 2018 ) or Hamachi, but for this example we'll go with Hamachi. You download that thing, and installed everything it requires (usually a virtual lan adapter - AKA: 'VLAN'), then start it up, press the program's power button, create a network, and your friend Dick joins the network. After which you go into the server-properties file and change the ip line from "'0.0.0.0" to whatever your hamachi's IPv4 was, for example "217.533.901.001".
Now your friend can finally join in and you'll have the most autistic time of your life.

I found that even with the friendly UI, punching in IPs and having alternate network adapters was just too much for my friends when we used it. They weren't techies, but I struggled to see even back then why we were always held up for the same two or three people who were paralyzed by the complexity. I've seen recently games that remove the direct IP connection option, and I think it's for the same reason.

 

[Carpenter Trout]

I just recalled that Wippien was a thing, but I doubt anyone would use it anymore, since it aged like milk.
To use it you need first to create a login on some xmpp, like this one, then you need to close it and reopen it as admin (do this at least once). And then I don't know how well it works, and if it works.

Edit: someone also suggested me Playhide. Does anyone know if that's any good?

 

[Ted Kaczynski]

What's a good free VPN for windows that isn't just a honeypot?

 

[Evil Peter Griffin]

What's a good free VPN for windows that isn't just a honeypot?

Pretty sure all the good VPNs are paid for.

 

[Don Yagon]

Ah, Hamachi. Now that's the name that brings up memories. Basically all ISPs in my area had carrier-grade NAT, so unless you happened to have the same connection as your friend (in which case you both get an internal IP address in 10.0.0.0/8 subnet and can connect to each other), you have to either call ISP and pay extra for static public IP, or use those kind of tools. You can guess which option 12 year old me went with.
Nowadays I do have a plan with decent speeds and public IP, but there's just something comfy about those virtual LANs that aren't accessible from the rest of the internet. And technology itself evolves, now there are more robust mesh-like solutions, such as Yggdrasil. I tried to play Minecraft with friends through it, and it worked fine, with low enough pings for comfortable gameplay. Though due to using IPv6 addresses it might be problematic to use with older games.

 

[Carpenter Trout]

I found that even with the friendly UI, punching in IPs and having alternate network adapters was just too much for my friends when we used it. They weren't techies, but I struggled to see even back then why we were always held up for the same two or three people who were paralyzed by the complexity. I've seen recently games that remove the direct IP connection option, and I think it's for the same reason.

lol, yeah. I still remember back in the days of TeamSpeak 3, explaing how to just "press the thing and punch in the numbers" was akin to rocket science to some people.

What do you see as the problem with ZeroTier? I haven't used it for gaming, but as far as use on Windows in general, my primary issues there have been related to firewall rules (which you should be able to take care of by whitelisting what you're using on there), or Windows getting confused about what the primary network connection is when you are connecting over a wireless connection and have ZeroTier and another VPN connection or three that you regularly take up and down (a Windows networking problem not a ZeroTier one, resolvable by disabling and enabling the wireless connection).

It's good, to be fair. The issue is that if you want to explain to that one friend that he needs to do some steps, it feels like backseating a monkey sometimes.