I’ve been testing VPN services and somehow every one with a client has written their own. Proton, Windscribe, IVPN, Mullvad, AirVPN, NordVPN, and the list goes on.
Don’t these services all do the same thing? Connect to a server to get a list of servers, then use WireGuard or OpenVPN to make a connection, and have some fancy stuff like split tunneling or a killswitch. It should just take configuration by adding profiles per service and it should be possible to use the same client.
What am I missing?
With some VPNs (Mullvad and NordVPN to name two) you can use your own clients by downloading lists of VPN relays and whatever authentication credentials the protocol uses. Though if you use the official client, it often has options beyond the protocol, such as selecting multiple hops (i.e. entering at one relay and exiting from another), disguising your traffic as another protocol (useful if you’re somewhere where VPN traffic is blocked) or padding traffic to a constant size to prevent profiling (i.e. by comparing to known video streams).
Followup question: Is there an overview of which VPNs can be used with third party (FOSS) clients and which not? I don’t currently use a VPN except a corporate VPN, but may change that in the future.