Three personal VPNs offer safer Wi-Fi

It's a truth universally acknowledged that public Wi-Fi hotspots aren't secure, nevertheless they're so convenient that most of us use them all the same. That's why there was something of a panic last year when Eric Butler showed everyone how easy it is to hijack Facebook, Twitter and PayPal accounts on open Wi-Fi networks via his FireSheep Firefox add-on.

Of course, not everything you do in an open Wi-Fi environment can be picked up by digital eavesdropping. Secure HTTPS servers are great, now it's likely that your e-mail account and many social networking sites don't use HTTPS servers, or perhaps just use them for logging in. Or worse, have you submit your user name and password from an HTTP page to get to an HTTPS server. {There is meanwhile one add-on for Firefox that offers HTTPS protection, yet only for certain sites.}

In the end, online transactions are only as secure as their most open link, and the most open link of all is the gap between the laptop and the wireless access point. The research that can as a matter of fact close that link is a tunneling virtual private network. VPNs establish a secure tunnel between your device and the first server you connect to.

Personal VPN services have been marketing themselves as hotspot security measures for nearly a decade. Once you get past the initial learning hump, it's a relatively simple and inexpensive way to lock down your communications. I looked at three of the more established players: HotSpotVPN, StrongVPN and WiTopia.

The personal VPN providers reviewed here offer two basic flavors of VPN. The most basic is built into the operating systems of practically every computing device: point-to-point tunneling protocol. VPN providers give you settings for their servers to plug into your operating system. It's robust enough for most people, nevertheless is blocked in certain regions and by certain service providers. It as well requires mucking around in your operating system for configuration and selection of a separate network device, which might not be feasible if you're on the road using a company laptop for some personal surfing.

More robust

A more robust and recent development is an SSL-based research from OpenVPN, which uses client software to manage connections. This works on Windows, Mac and various Linux and Unix platforms.

Setup: Configuring PPTP sets up a new network connection, a process that's as hard or easy as your operating system makes it. The personal VPN provider gives you a user name, password and server address, and you set up the network connection consequently.

The videos at the HotSpotVPN site

People using their operating system's PPTP capability are given configuration details that are easy enough to follow -- especially if you view the videos at the HotSpotVPN site. People choosing the OpenVPN option get a link to a download page that remains active for 48 hours. Linux and Mac users and people using Windows XP are provided with automatic installers; Windows 7 users need to jump through a few hoops -- run an installer and a separate configuration package.

The service is pretty much a set-it-and-forget-it operation. When you run the OpenVPN client software in accordance with Windows, for instance, you see an icon in your system tray that's green when connected to the VPN server, red when it's not and yellow when it's attempting to sync up. Once you have a handle on that detail, you just keep paying the subscription fees and you'll keep getting secure Wi-Fi connections. Theoretically, using a VPN slows down a network connection, nevertheless in the case of HotSpotVPN, it's nothing I noticed.

If you're comfortable plowing into VPN-related innovation without much interactive help or guidance, HotSpotVPN delivers the goods in affordable short-term packages. Those who don't know Blowfish from AES-256 may want to opt for something with a more consumer-friendly approach.

When you first log on to StrongVPN's Web site, you can see at first sight that the company has a lot going for it. In the first place, it has a strong showing of servers: 146 servers around the globe, including 94 in the United States. It uses gigabit switches. It can handle VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) traffic. And it provides 24/7 live technical support.

Understanding off-the-shelf VPNs isn't easy, even for someone with grounding in networking. WiTopia's strength is that the company does a lot of the work for you up front.

The other services in this roundup

Unlike the other services in this roundup, WiTopia provides access to all its servers right in the OpenVPN client software. Where HotSpotVPN and StrongVPN make you log in at their Web sites, request a server change and reconfigure the access program, WiTopia gives you a pick list. Right-click on the Windows tray icon and you can browse 60 servers in a variety of locations across the globe; as long as you remember to disconnect from your current server first, you can connect within seconds to another.

At the time of this review, WiTopia didn't assign a static IP address, which could muddy things up if you share a server with a WiTopia customer who abuses the service. Now during the review, neither this potential drawback nor any of the other factors that might affect performance put much of a crimp in my online experience. If there was any latency in my network connection, it wasn't noticeable, and stopwatch testing of a typical heavy-traffic network activity -- video streaming -- showed very little buffering delay compared to a control that wasn't using a VPN.

That said, WiTopia provides the most customer-friendly approach to setting up and selecting servers. For the price, you get pick-list access to servers worldwide from the OpenVPN application in the Windows tray. If you don't mind committing to a year's service up-front, it's the most cost-effective and easy way to get into personal VPNs.

Matt Lake is an author, award-winning research journalist and technical services coordinator in the field of education.

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