Data Route of Double VPN via Two Linked Devices

VPN
1

I’m curious as to the route data would take given the following setup…

I have a cellphone using a VPN that cellphone is providing its internet connection to a laptop via USB. The laptop then also runs a seperate VPN. Each VPN uses a seperate country so for purposes of this question we will say VPN 1 on the phone is connect to London and VPN 2 on the laptop is connected to Hong Kong. When I access a website for instance what is the order / data Route the request takes?

Does it leave the laptop and pass to the Hong Kong server and then back and the exit the phones connection and travel to the London server and back and then return back through the USB cable and into the laptop? A typical VPN connection leaves your device, goes to the VPN server and pops out the internet, the data is then returned back along the same path. However when adding a second device and VPN server the order of operations becomes confusing to me.

Some would ask why would someone use this setup? Short answer is to create an absolute failsafe against VPN failure. Even if your connection isn’t leaking, and you’ve setup a kill switch no system is perfect. Regardless I am not running this configuration, I actually just set it up to play around and see if it worked and that got me thinking about how it was actually handling the information and here I am!

Anyone have some insight?

2

Laptop → Phone → HK → London → Internet and back again in the same order in reverse

3

Internet supply is from the phone ISP which is connected to London so the internet supply to the laptop will be the London VPN, but then from there you’re connecting to the Hong Kong server which will then go on to the internet. So route will be phone ISP → London VPN → to laptop → to Hong Kong VPN on the laptop → to the internet. The data from the internet will come back to you in the reverse order.

4

Anyway to test this that you can think of? Sounds correct but I can’t shake the thought that when the request leaves the laptop it’s encrypted by the laptops VPN and tunnels out to the internet and then back before being passed into the second VPN for a repeat of the same action. I’m 90% leaning towards your explanation and 10% still curious. Sounds correct but I wonder if there’s a way to prove it?

5

This sounds just as plausible as the first answer I got. Anyway you know of to test this?

6

Yes, check your IP address as seen by the internet and geolocate it. Eg visit a site like https://whatismyipaddress.com/ from your laptop

7

Yes use trace route to Google or another website and check the IP addresses of the hops. You’ll need to also need to know and identify the IP addresses of the 2 VPN servers within the results to see the order the data follows on route to the website you’re testing against.