I can see that there’s another post on the same sort of subject posted only hours before this one, but I want to generalize the question: I have a PC, and a phone. Both have the app downloaded of the vpn that I use. My internet comes from my phone data, using a mobile hotspot to link up my PC.
Which device would you connect to the vpn?
Usually I use the app on the PC, and that seems to work fine. When I google my ip it shows the location of the server I’m connected to via vpn. But if I connect the phone to the vpn and then link up with the computer, I can no longer access the internet. It shows a “server IP address could not be found” message when I put a url in.
Is this much to worry about?
The hotspot you create with your phone is just a tunnel to the internet. Nothing you have/do not have running on your phone is going to affect that. When using your PC act as though it is connected straight to an ethernet cable. If you want a VPN to be active, then it needs to be running on your PC.
it depends on your configuration - and if you have root access on your phone
what you might want: start the vpn on your phone and when your pc uses your phones connection it also uses its vpn tunnel (just a guess)
what’s reality: the app running on your phone has only limited rights to act as a local proxy for other apps (including browsers) by somehow able to provide a proxy config to the other apps (maybe only works cause the apps just use the connection provided by the os and the app is able to change it) - that your pc just can’t get a connection at all shows at least that the vpn app on your phone has the required rights to block any “regular” traffic your pc might would use (wich would result in your pc show the actual ip of the phone - not of the vpn)
what you need to make this work: you have to need root access (android) / jailbreak (apple) your phone to have the powerful rights to intercept the datastream comming from the pc so it gets tunnelt through the vpn app - and this only works if the vpn app is able to pull this off with root privileges
unless you have these admin-rights you basically have to not use the vpn app on the phone so your pc can get internet access - and then use the vpn software on the pc to connect through the vpn - as it seem the vpn app you use on the phone doesn’t allow it to tetherpass through a connection when it’s running
Thanks. That’s reassuring.
Yes. But also, running the VPN on your phone and then connecting the PC to the phone gets the same outcome.
Running the VPN from my phone is what makes me unable to reach the internet on the PC, at least via mobile hotspot. It all connects together fine, but no webpages work on PC. Everything still works fine on the phone though.