Relakks dont do it

[Visitor]

Is anyone getting problems with cut off's ?

https://www.relakks.com

Ive been using Relakks for 2 months now, but all this week I keep loosing downloads, but p2p polling still works. When it happens http also goes as well, but not email ?

Im thinking that Virgin Media is up to something, If I re-connect than all is fine again, seams to be random.

If I change ports regular, I dont get cut off, but this is a pain to do all the time..

I also see that it takes the PC a few min to connect without VPN, didnt use to be like this, PC use to just carry on with the VM connection

[General Maximus]

this is an english cable forum so the chances of you finding anyone who would use a Swedish p2p website are very slim dude

[Russ]

'British' ;)

[General Maximus]

true, but i wouldnt be too happy if the people started speaking Welsh either :)

[Stabhappy]

English is Wales' and Scotland's primary language, so...

[Stuart]

this is an english cable forum so the chances of you finding anyone who would use a Swedish p2p website are very slim dude

Relakks is a consumer VPN service.

[General Maximus]

my bad, i got the impression that it was a swedish file sharing site or something

[whydoIneedatech]

Im thinking that Virgin Media is up to something, If I re-connect than all is fine again, seams to be random.


What possible reason would Virgin have for blocking your site access, this has all the signs of a conspiracy theory about it.:shocked:

Maybe we also need to wear tinfoil beanie hats in case they are reading our minds:LOL:

[General Maximus]

this might be a stupid idea but rather than virgin blocking you from accessing the site how about the site blocking you because it knows you aren't in Sweden? I can remember years ago there were a few shows i liked to watch on TV (Odyssey 5) which were run by Showtime (tv channel) in the US and you could never get onto their site to find out about new eps and stuff because they would only let you onto the site if your connection originated in the US and you got an annoyingly polite message telling you so.

Maybe the swedish sites lets people connect to it and does a sweep of ip addresses every couple of mins and kicks non-swedish people off?

[whydoIneedatech]

this might be a stupid idea but rather than virgin blocking you from accessing the site how about the site blocking you because it knows you aren't in Sweden? I can remember years ago there were a few shows i liked to watch on TV (Odyssey 5) which were run by Showtime (tv channel) in the US and you could never get onto their site to find out about new eps and stuff because they would only let you onto the site if your connection originated in the US and you got an annoyingly polite message telling you so.

Maybe the swedish sites lets people connect to it and does a sweep of ip addresses every couple of mins and kicks non-swedish people off?
Much more likely explanation;)

[General Maximus]

thanks, i feel so clever now and that for the first time ever, I have managed to contribute something useful before a super genious gets here and talks about stuff which I have no clue about :)

[Joxer]

It isn't a peer to peer site it is an anonomyser - presumably using a vpn - you can switch to English near the top left.

[whydoIneedatech]

Is your subscription up to date as it is not free to use.

[Joxer]

I really should have refreshed this page before I hit submit after thinking I had done nearly an hour ago - it just didn't seem that long...

[Visitor]

Oh sorry, I thought most people new what relakks was :) well you would have thought so in a broadband forum topic...

Relakks
Relakks offers you not only to surf anonymously, but also to use clients and applications anonymously. A VPN connection !

So you connect your broadband as normal, then connect to the VPN server, from there out, nobody (Including VM) can see what your doing.

So if you are downloading via P2P VM dont know what it is your downloading. At the moment Relakks is FREE, its suppose to be a few Euro's a month, but every time you try and pay them, they tell you they are not excepting payments at the moment :)

Anyway, its not Relakks thats the problem, its Virgin Media, they are cutting the connection, you need to re-connect to the VPN to restart..

I cant belive nobody here is using it :)

[Stabhappy]

uhh.. you realise that all data you send and recieve actaully goes through VM servers no matter if you're using a VPN ? I very much doubt that they offer an encrypted service.

[whydoIneedatech]

Oh sorry, I thought most people new what relakks was :) well you would have thought so in a broadband forum topic...

Relakks
Relakks offers you not only to surf anonymously, but also to use clients and applications anonymously. A VPN connection !

So you connect your broadband as normal, then connect to the VPN server, from there out, nobody (Including VM) can see what your doing.

So if you are downloading via P2P VM dont know what it is your downloading. At the moment Relakks is FREE, its suppose to be a few Euro's a month, but every time you try and pay them, they tell you they are not excepting payments at the moment :)

Anyway, its not Relakks thats the problem, its Virgin Media, they are cutting the connection, you need to re-connect to the VPN to restart..

I cant belive nobody here is using it :)
Why would they feel the need to cut your connection and what proof can you provide to show this apart from losing the connection to a website.

[Thomas.Fisk]

uhh.. you realise that all data you send and recieve actaully goes through VM servers no matter if you're using a VPN ? I very much doubt that they offer an encrypted service.

And you clearly know nothing about VPNs.

Anyway, the most likely explanation here is that since Relakks is providing a free VPN service, they're just getting too much traffic and their servers fail occasionally.

[Joxer]

Well, VM may not know what you are up to but relakks will...

you need to re-connect to the VPN to restart..

That would impy it was the VPN at fault if VM where dropping the connection surely you would no longer be able to connect at all.

[Milambar]

Its possible, but extremely improbable that they are inserting fake RST packets into the tcp stream, much like Comcast did with bittorrent connections.

However, as I said, its very unlikely this is the case, if it were, a whole lot of others would be having issues with VPNs.

More likely realakks are just innundated with traffic and keep losing the connections.

[v0id]

this is an english cable forum so the chances of you finding anyone who would use a Swedish p2p website are very slim dude

You know the pirate bay is swedish right, and many other popular filesharing sites are hosted in Sweden? ;)

[Stabhappy]

And you clearly know nothing about VPNs.


You obviously phoned in sick instead of being tought manners.

Here, allow me to elaborate on my assumption, from the wikipedia webpage:

A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network in which some of the links between nodes are carried by open connections or virtual circuits in some larger network (e.g., the Internet) instead of by physical wires. The link-layer protocols of the virtual network are said to be tunneled through the larger network when this is the case. One common application is secure communications through the public Internet, but a VPN need not have explicit security features such as authentication or content encryption

The OP stated nothing of encryption or any other security related network usage, so I assumed the VPN was being used soley as a proxy. And, unless you want to challenge the entire network topology structure, data will travel between you, and the VPN service, thus through VM's servers onto the internet before reaching it's destination.

[Thomas.Fisk]

And reading people's descriptions of the service -or looking on the relakks homepage- would have revealed that it's an encrypted VPN.

[Stabhappy]

Unfortunately the webpage was in sweedish and I didn't notice the language change function :).

[zing_deleted]

Perhaps there is a problem on route to the VPN if that was the case you would get cut offs perhaps?

[Wild Oscar]

While the idea of Relakks may sound ideal, it may not be as good as you think because of the 'Wiretapping' law the swedish parliament passed earlier this year!

http://torrentfreak.com/swedes-to-be-wiretapped-despite-protests-080619/
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=4591

[Welshchris]

true, but i wouldnt be too happy if the people started speaking Welsh either :)

Pwy ydych chi? lol

[Horace]

A lot of posters in this thread seem to have missed the real reason someone would be using a service like Relakks and that is to hide your IP on puplic P2P networks which it would do perfectly well. It doesn't really matter if VM or the Swedish authorities can see what you're doing, those two groups don't have a history of taking indviduals to court or asking for monies because you had an MP3 on your PC. It would also be very useful for avoiding Geo-IP blocks on American media sites since they offer American based IP's as well as Swedish.

To address the OP's post, there are or were issues with Vista + SP1 so maybe that's part of your problem if you use that OS. https://www.relakks.com/news.php (May 2008 but it hasn't been edited )
If not I'd contact them since the service isn't taking payment and therefore is still testing, they'd probably be happy to hear from you.

[darkbeing]

The odd thing about this is the way you can get on the site if you go through a French anonymous web proxy, but not if you have a British ip address or american
I just tested it with several using xp as an OS.

I would say its probably being blocked either by VM or at some other British point.
However since I probably wont use it I am not that much interested in the actual site but I do love a good "why cant i connect to this" type of mystery

[Horace]

Gotta love how people instantly blame an ISP when they can't hit a site. The site works fine from a VM connection.

[Hugh]

I can connect fine from a VM (ex-NTL) residential connection.

[darkbeing]

Gotta love how people instantly blame an ISP when they can't hit a site. The site works fine from a VM connection.

I didnt blame the isp - I said "VM [the isp] or some other british point"

[Visitor]

Ok, so a lot of people here who dont know how this VPN tunnel works, never mind, go read the relakks site, im sure you will learn how to find "English" link.

Anyway the problem continues, while P2P peer look ups continue as normal, the download is killed. I have found by switching ports regular seams to keep it going longer.

I can see that its during the day mostly (even though I dont reach the cap limit) after 9:00PM it stays solid for much longer. at this moment (7:20PM) 286B/s and im watching the file size, and will pause until 9:00PM if need be

However its nothing to do with the download limits, as my speed dont drop after a re-load...

Relakks is a very large broadband service, they can give you as much bandwidth as you want, so this isnt the problem.

Sometimes, the whole network is cut (Except p2p peer look ups) that includes browsing, checking email, but the VPN connection is still connected, and still reporting as working.

It never did this until my first post here, and its been like it ever since..

As for speed, I get 250kB/s mostly.. sometimes more (10MB broadband) depending on number of peers, and there are lots of VM proxies amung them.

I guess Ill see if others start talking about this problem, maybe its not VM, perhaps my VOIP box :) on another port.

---------- Post added at 19:29 ---------- Previous post was at 19:23 ----------

More info

Service Description - RELAKKS Safe Surf
The Service consists of an encrypted VPN tunnel between your computer and RELAKKS. The IP-number you receive from your existing ISP is only used to connect your computer to RELAKKS,from there on RELAKKS substitute your existing IP-number with a new IP-number from RELAKKS. This gives you a number of advantages:

· Your existing ISP will not be able to intercept and track your applications or communication
· Your existing ISP can not limit what you can do nor limit what information you can access
· Other organizations or individuals can’t intercept or track your applications or communication.

Similar services have been available on the Internet for some time, but this is the first time you can get all the advantages without any drawback.

Bandwidth
RELAKKS is fast and you get exactly the same bandwidth as you get from your ISP today (i.e. if you have a 100 Mbps connection from your existing ISP we will do our best do deliver the same bandwidth to you when using RELAKKS). Important notice: you will not be able to get more bandwidth from RELAKKS than you have from your existing ISP today. Encryption will make your CPU work harder but it will not inflict any degradation of you bandwidth.

Notice, that in order to use RELAKKS Safe Surf you need an existing broadband connection – if you can’t access Internet you can’t use RELAKKS in its present form.

Encryption Technology
The VPN tunnel use 128-bits encryption (satisfying for most commercial applications like on-line banking).

For security reasons RELAKKS do not use any American software neither for encryption nor for any other part (we anticipate that most users will in spite of that use an American OS), but there is noting stopping an advanced user from accessing RELAKKS with a more secure operating system or use a specific VPN-client. Not that this is not at the moment supported by RELAKKS customer care.

Legal
RELAKKS is a company incorporated in Sweden. The service is basically a Swedish broadband subscription offered over the Internet. This means that the legal framework mainly consists of the The Electronic Communications Act 2003 389. What will this mean if:

· Swedish authorities or,
· Other organization or individuals demands access to information protected by RELAKKS?

RELAKKS Safe Surf enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that RELAKKS do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.

If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned – fined not enough). .

RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you (but that’s all). RELAKKS do not store any subscribtion information about you except what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service.

For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over “traffic data” including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.

Regarding inquires from other parties than Swedish authorities RELAKKS will never hand over any kind of information.

The combination Swedish high-tech encryption and the strongest legal protection give you true access to Internet, safer and speedier then ever before.

[hokkers999]

Is anyone getting problems with cut off's ?

https://www.relakks.com

Ive been using Relakks for 2 months now, but all this week I keep loosing downloads, but p2p polling still works. When it happens http also goes as well, but not email ?

Im thinking that Virgin Media is up to something, If I re-connect than all is fine again, seams to be random.

If I change ports regular, I dont get cut off, but this is a pain to do all the time..

I also see that it takes the PC a few min to connect without VPN, didnt use to be like this, PC use to just carry on with the VM connection

I started getting connection problems with them, so I've switched to these guys instead www.swissvpn.net (http://www.swissvpn.net)

---------- Post added at 21:40 ---------- Previous post was at 21:39 ----------

[snip] Maybe the swedish sites lets people connect to it and does a sweep of ip addresses every couple of mins and kicks non-swedish people off?

Doubt it, it's a paid for service.

[cook1984]

I am finding Relakks to be okay the the moment. They have occasional problems but in the last few weeks it seems to have been fine.

One issue I do have is when STM kicks in. It seems to just randomly drop packets leading to massive packet loss, which can cause problems with the VPN.

[Visitor]

Well if it is Traffic Management, it cutting in early, I make sure I dont exceed 1Gb during the day. Even so, after a re-dial it all works again anyway.

The thing is, its random, so I cant pin it down, sometime 10 min, sometimes 1 hour, sometimes its the very fast download, slow downloads seam to stay longer, but eventually they die too

[popper]

you lot do know the Virgin media have been installing and trialing the new "alot" DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) Interception kit to replace the perfectly good (according to them) STM kit and so collect, process, and inspect far more of your data flow(perhaps all of it) right?

when WDINT said #8 (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34685913-post8.html) "What possible reason would Virgin have for blocking your site access, this has all the signs of a conspiracy theory about it.:shocked:
"

you already know about ALOT DPI OC, and are perfectly aware that it may not be a case of "wanting to Block", but rather a side effect of the ALOT DPI kit and its use on sections of VM right now, as the VM techs get their heads around the kit and its settings for the new re-purposed kit for end users data collection , and the effects its having, intended or not.

perhaps the West Midlands has had new ALOT DPI kit installed and the locals dont know it well enough as yet....


i suspect Baguley/wythenshawe has had the DPI kit installed too several weeks ago now.... time will tell i guess as people start collecting wireshark data flows on their data when these problems show themselves and checking it over, im not good on that part alas.....

if anyones interested i found this interesting US PDF thats werth a read.....

http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/stig/network_stig_v7r1_20071025.pdf

[hokkers999]

you lot do know the Virgin media have been installing and trialing the new "alot" DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) Interception kit to replace the perfectly good (according to them) STM kit and so collect, process, and inspect far more of your data flow(perhaps all of it) right?

when WDINT said #8 (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34685913-post8.html) "What possible reason would Virgin have for blocking your site access, this has all the signs of a conspiracy theory about it.:shocked:
"

you already know about ALOT DPI OC, and are perfectly aware that it may not be a case of "wanting to Block", but rather a side effect of the ALOT DPI kit and its use on sections of VM right now, as the VM techs get their heads around the kit and its settings for the new re-purposed kit for end users data collection , and the effects its having, intended or not.

perhaps the West Midlands has had new ALOT DPI kit installed and the locals dont know it well enough as yet....


i suspect Baguley/wythenshawe has had the DPI kit installed too several weeks ago now.... time will tell i guess as people start collecting wireshark data flows on their data when these problems show themselves and checking it over, im not good on that part alas.....

if anyones interested i found this interesting US PDF thats werth a read.....

http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/stig/network_stig_v7r1_20071025.pdf

Not even VM can do DPI inside an *encrypted* VPN.

[popper]

you imply i said that "VM can do DPI inside an *encrypted* VPN" i DID NOT.

that does not preclude the new DPI layer7 installed kit interfering with these overlay tunneled data flows and coursing it to drop (part of) the connection and see the effects reported here etc though does it...

[cook1984]

Thing is, VPN is mainly used by business customers to connect offices or allow people to work from home. If VM was deliberately breaking them they would be getting a lot of businesses raising fault tickets with them.

Believe me, where I work we are doing tech support for a lot of business customers and we are very good at identifying these kinds of network faults. In fact, our lives would be easy if it wasn't for Easynet's incompetence and inability to provide a working SDSL live, but anyway... The point is, knowledgeable people would notice and quickly pin the blame on VM.

[Visitor]

Ok, well it never got any better, also RELAKKS started to charge, and since I had these problems I gave up :) Ill just have to say my WIFI was hacked :)