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Oh, the Netherlands, Germany, France. If only I could visit these countries someday. But oh well, we'll earn it.
A detailed exploration of VPN evolution, server hosting, and internet restrictions in Russia with personal experiences and service reviews.
Key Takeaways
- VPN use has evolved from niche browser extensions to complex personal server setups.
- Telegram bots distributing VPN links offer flexibility but face speed and reliability issues.
- Choosing the right VPS provider is crucial for performance and legal safety.
- Internet censorship in Russia has intensified, affecting popular platforms like YouTube and Telegram.
- Personal VPN servers provide the best solution for stable and unrestricted internet access.
What the video covers
- The video discusses the early days of VPNs and their limited mainstream use.
- It covers the rise of VPN links distributed via Telegram bots and their advantages.
- The creator shares experiences setting up personal VPN servers and the complexity involved.
- Reviews and comparisons of popular VPS providers like AdminVPS, AEZA, Hosts, and Astro VPS are given.
- The impact of internet restrictions in Russia, including throttling of YouTube and blocking of Telegram, is analyzed.
- The video highlights challenges with forced whitelisting and VPN bypass techniques in Kazan.
- Discussion on the slow rollout and limited coverage of 5G internet in Russia.
- The creator emphasizes the importance of owning personal servers for stable and powerful VPN access.
- Warnings about the risks of using Russian hosting providers due to compliance with local laws.
- Overall, the video provides practical insights and personal anecdotes about navigating internet censorship.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Early VPN Use
- 01:16Social Networks and VPN Popularity
- 02:23Telegram VPN Links and Their Advantages
- 03:25Setting Up Personal VPN Servers
- 04:27Testing VPS Providers and Server Performance
- 05:20Review of Various Hosting Services
- 07:22Internet Restrictions and Whitelisting in Kazan
- 08:20Final Thoughts and Future Outlook
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Pure, absolute madness. Pure, absolute madness. Back in the day, VPNs were not exactly a mainstream thing. You had to go into browser extensions based on random people's recommendations, find that one specific extension, and use it for two cases. Either to access Rutracker or to
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satisfy your carnal needs without authorizing via VKontakte. In short, you could easily do without it and only turn on those three cherished letters for special occasions. Especially since the speed would be cut to indecent levels. And in general, there was an
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opinion that by using ways to bypass regional restrictions, all your cookies would be stolen, and with them, access to vital accounts. Few people agreed to such a deal back then.
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Pure, absolute madness. Pure, absolute madness. In March 2022, Instagram went down. And regardless, considering what the reptilian allowed on his platform, the decision was quite expected.
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Personally, I left that social network because there was no cool content there before, and even less so now. And if it had remained, the blocks might have actually worked. Nobody is going to install sketchy apps for the sake of
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two marginal services, watch ads in them every 30 minutes, or pay extra for using the internet. In 2024, YouTube was throttled, and that became the turning point. Blocks work when they ban absolutely useless social networks, like it was with the color camera app.
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But when they ban the hosting service that you wake up to, spend your day with, and fall asleep to. It seems to me that it was a fatal mistake. And no, not everyone rushed to install bypass tools immediately. On the computer,
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YouTube was still loading somehow, and on the phone, there was no slowdown at all. Meaning YouTube worked just like before. But they fixed that situation a little later too.
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Pure, absolute madness. Pure, absolute madness. The first VPN services were either a browser extension or a standalone app with one big "On" button. No one bothered the user with technical aspects, like bandwidth, protocol, or ping. A little later, a
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seemingly ultimate solution appeared: distributing universal VPN links via Telegram. Everything worked simply. You go into a bot, pay 150 rubles, and get a month of internet access. The plus of this method was that you aren't dependent on one specific application.
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You can insert this link into any configurator that supports the required protocol. That's why it's funny to see guys saying, "My Hiddify app is a great VPN." The guys don't understand that these apps themselves are not VPNs. You
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have to insert those very links from Telegram into them. Those guys will be shocked when they find out they don't have to toggle their VPN on and off, but can just set up split tunneling.
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But even these methods didn't last long. As these services grew in popularity, the internet started slowing down again. At one point, I got so fed up that I almost considered emigrating to countries where you can watch YouTube
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in 8K at 120 FPS. And that’s when I decided to set up my own personal server. Honestly, I thought you just paid a bit more money and got the same old Telegram VPN key, just personally for you. How wrong I was.
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Total madness. Total madness. Watching any guide on YouTube, an unprepared person will be overwhelmed by the amount of information. First, you go to a hosting site, there are all sorts of sketchy and crooked ones. Then you need to go to GitHub and find a script there.
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But you can't just paste the script in. You have to download a separate client that lets you log into the server with a username and password.
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But there was an easier option. I can't name it, but it's loosely related to a disease where you lose your memory. So, in this app, you just enter your server details, and it sets everything up by itself in a couple of minutes. After
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that, the internet was open to you again. But even that kept working on and off. And that’s when I had to get into some serious tinkering in the console. But you know how it goes. You go to the hosting site or a Telegram
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bot, pay for a server, log in via SSH, and update the software with an apt update/upgrade command. After that, you install a fancy script from GitHub and set up secure internet access right inside it. Actually, it’s nothing complicated. Once you get the hang of
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this whole thing, only one question remains. Where to get the most stable and powerful servers. I tested the most popular solution so you wouldn't have to. And here is what I concluded.
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AdminVPS. Great prices. For 500 rubles. In some locations, you can snag a port of up to 10 Gbps. And the pings are fantastic. But there are issues. And the biggest danger is that it's a completely Russian host, which complies
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with all our laws. So, if the authorities suddenly force hosting providers to ensure no VPNs are installed on their servers, you'll have to look for another host. But just for practice and trying out a decent service for reasonable money, it’s
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perfect. Yeah, yeah, I know what you might say. They’re under sanctions, everything is bad, it’s terrible. And they have their own euro exchange rate.
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130 rubles for one single euro. But I decided to test them out myself anyway.
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The pros are obvious: non-Russian jurisdiction and quite powerful hardware. I get a server in Finland, and it’s just total garbage. Huge ping, no speed at all, just absolute crap. Next, I took a server in Sweden, and it was even worse. I wrote to their
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support, asking: "What’s the reason for this?" That’s when they revealed the whole truth to me. The thing is, all servers except the German ones are routed through Germany itself. So, it creates this involuntary cascade where speed is cut realistically and ping
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jumps all over the place. Then I tried taking a German one, and my delight knew no bounds. Low ping, massive speeds. You could move your whole family to this virtual Germany and not notice a slowdown. In short, if you
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want the safest option with the best specs, AEZA is it. You’ll have to pay a bit more, of course. Personally, my server costs me 800 rubles per month.
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But it really is the ultimate solution. One downside is that even when they restock German servers, they get snatched up in literally a matter of days. So, if you suddenly see one available, grab it without thinking.
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Hosts. I’d seen this host often too, decided to test it, and it’s probably the biggest loser. I was lured by the 10 Gbps channel in the Netherlands, while AEZA and AdminVPS couldn't offer that. But in the end, unstable speed
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and a fairly high ping. Sometimes it even broke the 1,000 ms ceiling. Overall, you can try it yourself, but that’s my experience. Astro VPS. I stumbled upon this host by accident on Telegram. They promise a whopping 25 Gbps in the Netherlands. And the first
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month is only 400 rubles. I tested it. Performance is generally okay, but I don’t think there’s really 25 Gbps here. Nevertheless, you can give it a try. And here, of course, you’ll ask: "What are these cheap servers for,
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which are perfect for building VPNs in a corporate environment? Your high chance for good content?" DNL Telegram channel.
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Well, I don't know, I use them for playing Minecraft. Anyway, owning your own servers is top-tier. Accessible on both PC and mobile internet.
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Pure insanity. Pure insanity. Well, at least that’s how it was. Because Kazan, where I live, was subjected to forced whitelisting. If I used to never turn off the three letters and just enjoyed it, now a regular accelerator didn't help when
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switching to mobile data. That’s where those same Telegram bots that give out keys saved me, only now they include a whitelist bypass. And you can no longer just turn it on and forget about it. You have to constantly cycle
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through servers, ping them, and hope that at least one of them works. At one point, I paid for about six of these "secure internet" services, and none of them w
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several months in advance. It’s absolute madness. It’s absolute madness. The spring of 2026 is something I’ll personally remember for a long time.
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Just imagine: you wake up, nothing has been blocked, and you already feel incredible joy. If someone had told me back in 2021 that I’d be happy about such a thing, I probably would’ve chuckled a bit, but with caution. By
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March 2026, the only services left in Russia that worked properly without any extra tools were Telegram and, perhaps, Twitch. But on March 16, they fixed that oversight too. They choked off Telegram. This time, for good. What for , why—I don’t know. Maybe people
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could get by without YouTube videos, though I can barely imagine that. But when they block something that’s essentially always running in the background, something your whole life practically grinds to a halt without— that’s, to put it mildly, strange.
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But what really finished me off was the ban on topping up Apple IDs using mobile carrier accounts. The Apple company hasn't been selling its hardware here at all since 2022. And at least they were still getting some money from those mobile transactions.
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Like paying for iCloud or, for example, an editing app that isn't officially sold in Russia but could be bought in two clicks via the App Store. No more.
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It seems this move was intended to force Apple to allow the installation of RuStore on their devices, but several months have passed since that ultimatum. Apple still hasn't caved.
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But, of course, we’ll wait some more. I think something will clearly have to change soon. And it’s very frustrating that we’re being restricted from both sides. On one hand , our own state restricts services that their creators didn’t restrict for us
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. On the other hand, services with an active political stance are blocking access from Russian IP addresses. For instance, did you know that if you log out of your Telegram account on all devices, you won’t be able to get
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back in? You need a code that either arrives in a support chat on another device, or, if there are no devices, it should come via SMS. But SMS from Telegram are banned from being received on Russian numbers, so nothing will
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arrive. But surely they invented a confirmation code via email for that case, except for some reason, it doesn’t arrive there either. I have one TG account on Yandex mail, another on Gmail, and nothing comes through to either one. I burned out another email
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account on Mail, and that's the only place where anything landed. To keep that from happening to you, set up a Telegram login in the settings and sign in without any verification. YouTube recently blocked my advanced features, so I can't add links to my videos
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anymore. But no worries, I’ll just dictate everything you need myself. So, write this down: https www. I definitely want to take a break from all of this sometimes. Thank God I paid for a Yandex Plus subscription. But the
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tracks were censored. Oh well, I didn't lose heart and switched to SoundCloud. The Americans, as always, brought a bit of democracy.
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It’s absolute madness. It’s absolute madness. Does it ever happen to you that you forget something? The internet is working fine now, both on PC and on my phone. Whitelists are flying, but it feels like something is still missing.
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At this point, we recall the Xbox issue , as well as Smart TVs. Where installing VPN clients is either problematic or outright impossible.
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Here you have three paths to choose from. Flash your router with the super-free OpenWrt firmware at the risk of bricking it, buy a ready-made solution like Routerich, or just get a Keenetic. Their routers offer incredible flexibility, huge power, and
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a sky-high price tag. I decided to overprovision and chose the beefiest model, the Keenetic KN-1812. On it, I created a separate network where a VPN runs, and I was just chilling until Russian services were required to block all VPN traffic. But then the new 5.1.1
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firmware arrived, which added routing. And can you imagine that even with the most powerful router on Earth, adding a few hundred thousand lines of IP addresses can cause lag? In the Yandex browser, the routing page doesn't load at all, and in Safari, you have to wait
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about five minutes before it lets you do anything. But as they say, if it works, don't touch it. And at first, it didn't work quite like it was supposed to. When connected to the separate Wi-Fi VPN, some Russian sites still
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said to turn off the VPN, and speed test wouldn't even load. But at some point, proper routing settings were applied to all my connections, including the wired ones. I didn't understand how it happened. I didn't touch anything. One day, the internet
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just became like it was in 2021. Everything is fast, everything loads, no problems at all. In short, I can recommend Keenetic. Everything works, not without its faults, but at least it works. But even here, it’s not that simple. Because now there’s word
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spreading that they are blocking Google and Cloudflare DNS, and basically the whole internet runs through that. I tried to find some workarounds for this , but it’s either too complicated or the guys don’t even try to explain anything properly. For now, DNS hasn't
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been banned in Kazan, so you can still enjoy a free internet. Absolute madness. Absolute madness. And just recently, a hilarious topic came up.
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Your best chance for quality content. The DNL Telegram channel. MTS introduced a 5G ad and announced that the launch is coming very soon, while creating a separate page on their website. A little later, MegaFon dropped the news that 5G is already
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working in some areas of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk, but I live in Kazan, so I’m completely left out here. The catch is also that the necessary frequencies for 5G weren't allocated and, apparently, will never be allocated. Our operators wanted to
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launch it on some local frequencies, and there were even promises that by the end of June, we would cover million-plus cities with high-speed 5G.
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We just have to wait for the frequency allocation. And now September is coming to an end, but 5G still hasn't started working. I’ve been making this video for so long that Russia actually managed to launch the long-awaited, long-suffering 5G. But as in a famous
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joke, there’s a nuance. They launched it not on the golden band, but on the N79 band. This band is mainly developed in Asia, but here, as I understand it, it also has some kind of catch. And to understand the irony, this very band is
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mainly available on Samsungs and iPhones. And the funny thing is that both these manufacturers have to give permission to use this very band in a specific country. And, as you know, there are some problems with that. On the websites of some operators, we can
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even see a coverage map. It is mostly available for MTS and T2, but MTS clearly notes that there is 5G up to 300 Mbps, and then there is "normal" 5G , which is developed in other countries , reaching up to 1.5 Gbps. On the
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Beeline website, it’s impossible to see 5G coverage at all. On the MegaFon website, they only point out some "5G mode," which is not actual 5G. And regarding MTS, well, some very nominal parts of Kazan are covered, so to speak
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. Of course, in Moscow, this 300- megabit 5G covers a larger area, but still, it's not "that" 5G. And if we switch to 1.5 Gbps, then we can see that Kazan is not covered at all, and in Moscow, it's just some occasionally
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occurring spots. In the end, 5G sort of exists. Things have moved off dead center. Nevertheless, it still has a long way to go. It's quite possible they'll just cover the whole country with 5G at up to 300 Mbps. But those
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1.5 gigabit speeds will only be in test zones. And of course, the operators didn't stand aside; MTS even stood out.
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They changed their network name from MTS Rus to MTS 5G. And they managed to pull the wool over people's eyes, because many now say, "But my iPhone supports 5G." What are you even writing ? Are you okay? And when people try to
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explain that it's just a network name, they just won't have it, they say, "No, no, it's 5G." And the fact that it says "MTS 5G LTE" doesn't seem to matter to them at all. We'll see how this whole
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topic develops in Russia. Do you know why I included this in the video? It's just a shame that 5G is working all over the world and you can literally get gigabit speeds on the street. And in Russia, not only has 5G never worked
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properly, but the remaining internet has been fiercely strangled. But there is some good news in all of this. They say we couldn't launch 5G because of frequencies occupied by the military.
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But we'll be able to launch 6G, since it won't involve frequencies needed for military purposes, hopefully, right.
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And there are problems with that too. Even now, you can be walking through the city and your LTE will drop to 3G.
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That will mean you no longer have internet access. And if the same thing happens with 6G, which it definitely will at first, since you can't cover such a huge country with 6G towers instantly. It turns out our connection
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will drop from ultra-fast 6G all the way down to LTE, skipping that untapped 5G entirely. Also, because everyone rushed to buy servers to play Minecraft , Europe started having water problems.
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The thing is, servers generate a lot of heat. Cooling them requires water, which, to put it mildly, isn't exactly in surplus. Especially after the spread of neural networks. It also coincided with this summer being abnormally hot.
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Do you see what the issue is? Data centers in places like the Netherlands were originally designed for a different load, say, for the residents of the Netherlands and a few others.
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But when the load suddenly started being measured in tens of millions of people who decided to watch YouTube using their resources, that's when the problems started. Often, when visiting hosting sites or contacting support, you can notice that our European
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partners have either power issues or data center cooling problems. In short, it's all just kind of sad. I hope that all of this will end someday. The main thing is that we don't end before then.
Topics:VPNinternet censorshipRussia internetVPS hostingTelegram VPNYouTube throttlingpersonal VPN serverinternet restrictions5G RussiaAdminVPS
