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Boring Review: CatalystHost for VPNs
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Boring Review: CatalystHost for VPNs

raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

I've used CatalystHost for VPNs for about 1.5 years. I can only review them on the basis of their LEB special plans.

You can't find these on their main web site. You need to go into WHMCS and select "LEB DALLAS EXCLUSIVE PLANS" or find an old thread on LET/LEB. The particular plans I have are 128/64, 10GB disk, 10TB transfer, OvZ in Dallas. I don't use anything like 10TB a month but it's nice to never worry.

Interestingly, from my house in Portland, Vultr Seattle is ~100ms, while Dallas is 60ms, which makes no sense to me. You network types are weird. OK, I actually do understand how that could happen but it's still weird. I could find a lower ping in PDX but haven't needed one to date.

My review is kind of boring because essentially the service has worked great. I used to use @Nyr 's roadwarrior script, but now I use the Angristan OpenVPN installer, as Angristan has much better security, even though it's well know that I have no competence in the field of IT security, so take this for what it's worth.

I can't remember a time I've noticed any overhead, but my Internet is generally either bulk downloads, interactive SSH, or web browsing. I haven't put the Roku on a VPN yet as various fascist streaming services get their panties in a wad about DC IPs. I use Viscosity on Mac or Windows and whether the padlock is red or green, it feels the same to me on any of my clients.

In the entire time I've been with Catalyst, I don't remember a single outage. @ryanarp is friendly to deal with and sorted a credit/plan change for me very quickly..

This is LET so I have to complain about something...let's see:

  • I wish they had a few more locations for this plan for when I travel, but it's so cheap I can understand why they don't.

  • @ryanarp doesn't participate on LET as much as he used to, alas. This actually is my only major concern - is Catalyst in the lowend market for the long haul? Well, it's not like I have a ton of money at risk.

Good work @ryanarp !

Comments

  • Nice review...good to see positive reviews here also ;)

  • raindog308 said: is Catalyst in the lowend market for the long haul

    I believe they will continue to exists for a very very long time. But not sure about their plans for the lowendmarket

    Thanked by 2yomero ryanarp
  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    Forgot to add...when doing 3072 diffie helman parm gen, on one Catalyst server:

    real    2m23.499s
    user    1m56.457s
    sys     0m3.844s
    

    And on another:

    real    12m15.880s
    user    11m14.499s
    sys      0m10.486s
    

    But both are:

    model name  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
    model name  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
    

    I regenerated on both twice on different days, and both times the numbers were about the same.

    You only do that once, so it's not a big deal...the VPNs perform the same, but I thought it was interesting.

    Thanked by 1ryanarp
  • HarambeHarambe Member, Host Rep

    Can confirm. I've got one of the other specials, 256MB ram, 10GB and unmetered gigabit I believe. Great for a VPN.

    I don't remember any outages but I do remember Incero moved to a new DC in Dallas last year so there was like a few hours of planned maintenance.

    Thanked by 1ryanarp
  • Yeah, just wish they were KVM so I could run L2TP over IPSec, but other than that I like mine in Dallas.

    Thanked by 1ryanarp
  • ryanarpryanarp Member, Patron Provider

    Thanks for the kind words. We have no plans of discontinuing our LEB/LET plans. We just don't advertise them easily on website to make them more exclusive for you guys :) https://portal.catalysthost.com/cart.php?gid=26

  • I have a 256MB with 333TB VPS in Seattle, no complaints.

  • Ryan is great.

    raindog308 said: I used to use @Nyr 's roadwarrior script, but now I use the Angristan OpenVPN installer, as Angristan has much better security

    Care to expand on this a bit? I don't have much experience with it to tell how it's more secure but @Nyr's comments about the subject are here: https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install/issues/83

    This is also not a confidence builder for the young Angristan: https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install/issues/138

    Thanked by 2Yura raindog308
  • EobbleEobble Member
    edited March 2017

    @serverian said:
    Ryan is great.

    raindog308 said: I used to use @Nyr 's roadwarrior script, but now I use the Angristan OpenVPN installer, as Angristan has much better security

    Care to expand on this a bit? I don't have much experience with it to tell how it's more secure but @Nyr's comments about the subject are here: https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install/issues/83

    This is also not a confidence builder for the young Angristan: https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install/issues/138

    The Angristan definitely has some recommend changes but Nyr's script is perfectly fine. I would recommend using Nyr's script, since it works on more systems out of the box. I've tested some of the settings in Angristan script and some of the options do cause issues and requires some customization (system/user dependent). In my opinion, it's more likely your host machine is vulnerable before the encryption in Nyr's is cracked.

    Disclaimer: It's been awhile since I've played with OpenVPN so things may of changed.

  • @TheOnlyDK said:
    I have a 256MB with 333TB VPS in Seattle, no complaints.

    Me too, and works very good.

    Thanked by 1TheOnlyDK
  • sallysally Member

    Hey guys, no compliants - as long as it remains NSA compliant.
    Right?

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