Setting up a VPN connection on Android devices. VPN connection on Android: setting up and disabling Installing VPN on Android

5 minutes to read. Views 96 Published 08/28/2018

Modern smartphones delight users with new features and with each subsequent model previously unknown features are added. Today, smartphone owners do not use all the functions of their devices, because many are simply unknown to them. We continue to understand the useful capabilities of modern phones and next in line are. We will find out why this is needed, in what situations to use it and how to enable it in smartphones with different OSes.

What is Virtual Private Network

If you translate the abbreviation word for word, you get the following – virtual private network. That is, it is a specific technology through which a logical network with one or more connections is created. In this case, a secure connection is created on top or inside the existing network (a kind of tunnel), through which, using a special application, the network user accesses a special VPN server. Within the connection, maximum protection of transmitted data is ensured through special encryption and modification.

Recently, such services, which allow you to use the Internet conditionally anonymously, have become increasingly popular, and therefore smartphones have been equipped with similar capabilities.

Let's figure out in what situations it is advisable to use a secure connection via VPN. This feature is perfect for people who often use open WiFi hotspots, for example, at the airport and other public places. An unsecured WiFi connection can lead to the theft of the owner’s confidential data; you must admit that modern smartphones are simply a tasty morsel for scammers in this matter. In order to avoid the possibility of data interception, sending important information over unsecured channels is worth using a VPN.

This is not the only benefit that comes from using a virtual private network. Its use allows you to open a resource blocked in a specific region or, in general, in a country. In addition, this is a great option to bypass corporate network restrictions.

VPN, what is it on a phone?

Now we know what it isVPN, what is it on the phone,Next, we’ll figure out what’s the difference between these technologies and desktop ones. A VPN connection can also be used on a computer, accessing the Internet from a full-fledged browser. However, the technology itself for forming a tunnel and ensuring a continuous connection differs, primarily due to the characteristics of the connection to the network itself.

When accessing the Internet from a computer, a stable channel is used without possible interruptions, which lead to a rupture of the tunnel and disclosure of data. Communication channels when using mobile gadgets are constantly changing. Depending on the available network type, the smartphone shows either 4G or LTE, or 3G. Because of this, a regular server is not able to maintain continuous communication with a mobile gadget. In this regard, many cloud VPN technologies have been adapted to these features and provide customers with the ability to use the network without fear of losing security.

A mobile connection often uses a dynamic IP that changes regularly, causing the regular VPN server to terminate the current connection and reactivate a new session. To avoid such phenomena, adapted services use a special type of authorization that allows the client to be correctly identified, even if the IP address changes frequently. In this case, it becomes possible to transfer data two-way from the VPN server to smartphones that change network settings. This approach allows for more flexible interface authorization.

How to use this feature on your smartphone

We have already found out VPN, what is it on a phone?and realized the benefits of using this feature. Now it's time to figure out how to connect and use the virtual network.

To begin with, it should be noted that there are both paid and free VPN servers. Which one to use is up to the client, but to ensure maximum security, you should not skimp. In addition, paid services open up more opportunities. After the choice in favor of one server or another is made, you should go to the connection settings directly in the smartphone.

Setting up on iPhone

Apple smartphones give the user the opportunity to set up a VPN themselves or use ready-made solutions from the App Store. In the second case, you just need to select a ready-made application in the Market and install it, enable VPN in the settings and select the installed service.

For manual settings, the algorithm is a little more complex. But if you follow our recommendations, there will be no difficulties.

After this you can use the Internet. In order to make sure that you get the desired result, you can first test your Internet connection using a special service, of which there are plenty on the network.

Setting up on smartphones with Android OS

It is worth noting that the owners of these gadgets are luckier. On their smartphones, setting up a VPN is much easier.

No other settings are required. As you can see, setting up and using a virtual network is much easier on Android than on iPhone.

Now the question VPN, what is it on a phone?you won't have it. We analyzed the technology in detail, understood the directions of its use and the features of servers designed for mobile clients. In addition, we learned how to set up and enable VPN on different smartphones. We welcome anyone who has any questions in the discussions, we will try to answer them. If the article was useful, share it on social networks.

Due to the blocking of popular sites and applications, Internet users are increasingly resorting to using VPNs. And users of Android OS devices are no exception.

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network is translated as a virtual private network. VPN is the name for virtual private networks that are created on top of other networks. In other words, when connecting to a VPN server, information in encrypted form passes through a virtual channel between the user and the server. Thus, your Internet provider cannot find out which site you are visiting, and therefore cannot block access to it.

Of course, access to blocked resources and applications is not the only reason to use a VPN. Another reason is to ensure the security of data transmission. Security experts recommend using a VPN connection to protect your device, such as on public Wi-Fi networks.

Taking into account all the advantages of using virtual private networks, the question arises: how to create a VPN on Android? There are several ways to create a VPN connection.

The first method: installing a third-party application.

The easiest and fastest way to create a VPN connection is to install a third-party application from the Play Market. Finding such an application in the Play Market is not difficult; you just need to enter the corresponding query in the search bar.

As a rule, such applications have a fairly clear interface. The maximum that a user may need is to select the country where the server is located and press the button "Connect".

If for some reason this method does not suit you, you can use the second one.

Second method: setting up a VPN on the device.

This method is suitable for more experienced users. Before you start setting up a VPN, you need to know the parameters of the server you plan to connect to, such as the VPN server address, user credentials, server type, DNS.

If you know all this data, you can start setting up a VPN connection (the setup procedure may vary depending on the brand of device). For this:

1) go to "Settings" and select "Other settings";

At this stage, the system, as a rule (depending on the device), prompts you to select , this is done so that attackers do not have access to your VPN connection and cannot change its parameters. This must be done, otherwise you will not be able to set up a VPN. If your device is already set to a lock type, the corresponding notification will not appear.

3) Fill in all required fields such as Name, connection type, server address;

4) if necessary, you can configure additional connection parameters. To do this, click the button "Show advanced options". Additional options include setting DNS lookup, DNS servers, route redirects.

5) After entering all the required information, click "Save".

To connect to the VPN server select the required name in the list of available networks (here you can also disable the VPN connection). Next you need to enter user credentials such as name and password, and then press the button "Connect".

When successfully connecting to the server, a notification will be shown with some information about the connection.

Thus, all data transmitted via the Internet connection will pass through the VPN server and be encrypted.

The development of mobile Internet technologies has made it possible to fully use phones and tablets for surfing the Internet. Mobile gadgets are used not only to search for necessary information, but with their help: communicate in social communities, make purchases, conduct financial transactions, and work in corporate networks.

But what about a reliable, secure, anonymous Internet connection? The simple answer is to use a VPN.

What is a VPN and why do you need it on your phone?

Technologies that allow you to create a logical network with one or many connections are collectively called Virtual Private Network (abbreviated as VPN). Literally translated, this expression sounds like a virtual private network.

Its essence is to create a secure connection over or inside another network (a kind of tunnel) through which, thanks to the application installed on the gadget, the client can access the VPN server. Within such a connection, all transmitted data is modified, encrypted and protected.

Why have services that provide the opportunity to use such virtual networks become so popular and is it really necessary to have them on a tablet or smartphone?

During tourist and business trips, there is often a need to use the Internet: to log into a mobile office, business correspondence, order and pay for tickets and communicate via Skype, etc. It’s convenient to check your email, analyze quotes, and study news using the device at hand. But for this you have to resort to Wi-Fi, which is now free in many train stations, airports, cafes and hotels.

Of course, the ability to access the Internet anywhere is a useful and convenient thing, but how safe is it? Experts involved in information security claim that through an unsecured Wi-Fi connection you can simply and without much difficulty gain access to all the data located on the gadget.

In this case, choosing VPN services will be the best opportunity to protect the user from theft of his confidential information. However, these virtual networks can be used for more than just security. Their use allows you to access a web resource that is unavailable in a certain region, bypass corporate network restrictions, and so on.

Features of mobile technologies

In order for owners of mobile gadgets to take advantage of these cloud technologies, many VPN servers have been adapted to work with such devices. The communication channels used by smartphones and tablets to access the Internet often change, it could be Wi-Fi, and then a 3G or 4G connection. This greatly complicates the ability of a regular VPN server to maintain a stable connection on a dedicated channel.

This happens because it sees gadgets accessing it from different subnets and IP addresses, which leads to applications installed on the devices losing active connections. To avoid this, special authorization methods began to be used on specially adapted servers equipped with VPN technology. Which make it possible to carry out two-way data transfer from the server to wearable gadgets, where the devices periodically change network settings.

How to properly use VPN capabilities on your phone

There are paid VPN server services and their free analogues. What is better to choose is up to each user to decide individually. If you manage to decide on the choice of service and server, you need to move on to configuration. Nowadays, the most popular mobile gadgets are iPhone and Android devices.

Activating VPN on iPhone

There are two ways to set up your iPhone to use these technologies. The first is to select the most suitable application for this from the App Store and install it. Then perform the following actions:

• Visit the settings section.
• Open the VPN tab and activate it with the slider.
• Then select the installed service.

The second is to configure the VPN manually. To do this, you need to carry out the following manipulations:

• By entering the settings section of the device, activate the VPN and click on the “add configuration” icon.
• Then select the security type: L2TP, IPSec or IKEv2 and activate the required configuration.
• After that, you should fill in information about the private network settings: a description of the remote identifier, server and fill in the information necessary for registration - nickname, password.
• If you have a proxy server, you should choose based on your preferences whether to use it: automatic or manual.
• By clicking the “Done” button and switching the status slider to the desired position, you can start surfing the Internet.

Now all traffic from the iPhone will go through the VPN.

Setting up a VPN on Android

Here it is much easier to connect the selected VPN service; for this you need to:

• Activate the “Settings” section, where in the “Wireless networks” line click on the inscription: “Advanced”.
• After which, after opening the “VPN” subsection and clicking on the + sign, information about the available protocols for connecting such services will be provided.
• Having selected and saved the required connection, all that remains is to enter and create the credentials necessary for work: login and password.

Of course, the settings for different smartphones may differ, but the basic steps are largely similar.

Conclusion

It’s hard to argue that the use of VPNs in mobile devices is becoming a more and more popular service. Thanks to such services, a lot of opportunities open up for users: when traveling, they have the opportunity not to break away from the work process, knowing that all their data is always protected, while being in another region, gain access to the necessary resources and other preferences.

The technology of secure virtual private networks Virtual Private Network, or VPN for short, has recently been used not only on computers, but also on mobile devices running certain operating systems. What is it intended for and how to set up such a connection on mobile devices, read on. It is proposed to understand both the technology itself and the correct activation of VPN on different mobile devices.

Let's figure out what VPN is in phones

Actually, there is not much difference between what constitutes access to the Internet through the use of a VPN on desktop computers, laptops, smartphones or tablets.

This is the most common tunneling, which, according to its operating principles, is somewhat similar to the functioning of anonymous proxy servers, otherwise called anonymizers.

What is VPN on phones? This is a tool that allows you to change the external IP of the device to access blocked resources. When the IP changes, the location of the user who is trying to enter a certain page that is not allowed to be accessed in his region also changes accordingly. In addition, in this state of affairs, the user remains as if unrecognized on the Internet, and his data is completely encrypted based on WPA protection.

True, just the other day it became known that the WPA2 protocol, in most cases used for connections via Wi-Fi, has quite serious vulnerabilities that allow attackers to monitor outgoing and incoming traffic in its entirety.

Why do you need a VPN on your phone?

The practical benefits of using a VPN connection are obvious, because the user can by and large bypass any blocking imposed on a certain resource and visit it as if he were geographically located in the region where the access permission is valid.

Examples include some US Internet radio stations, Russian news sites blocked in Ukraine, and much more. True, in countries such as China and North Korea, the question of how to set up a VPN seems completely meaningless, since to limit access to social networks or even YouTube video hosting, a state-wide blocking is used, consisting of the use of the most powerful firewalls, and not of a software nature, but of hardware (otherwise they would have been hacked long ago).

Connection problems

There are many advantages to using such technologies. But there are also problems. The most important one is that the tunnel used cannot simultaneously monitor different types of networks that connect to the Internet.

For example, the connection may be lost when changing Wi-Fi to 3G/4G. The problem has only recently begun to be resolved. Dedicated VPN servers now have special authorization that allows two-way data transfer, regardless of which network is currently in use.

The main advantage here is that, in cryptographic terms, the virtual interface of the user gadget, the operator’s network, and the access protocol itself have become the same.

Setting up a VPN on Android devices

But all this was purely theoretical information. We figured out a little about what VPN is in phones, and now let’s move on to the practical part. As is already clear, any modern mobile device has a function that allows you to use a VPN connection. On Android devices, how to set up a VPN can be solved in the easiest way (and without using third-party applications):

• To do this, you need to use the main settings section, go to the wireless network settings and select “Other networks”.
• By tapping on the “Advanced” line (names may differ depending on the system version), you can enter the section containing VPN settings.
• After clicking the button marked with a plus sign, information about all available protocols will be added.
• Then all that remains is to select the desired connection, come up with a username and password, and then log in under your own registration.

Activating VPN on Apple devices

On Apple devices, the operation of activating a VPN looks somewhat more complicated. You can, of course, activate the VPN in the settings to configure it automatically, but, as practice shows, in most cases the connection must be established manually:

1. After entering the section, you need to select adding a configuration.
2. Specify the type of security used (IPSec, L2TP, IKEv2).
3. Enter information about the remote ID and proxy server, login and password, and also indicate the type of connection mode (manual or automatic).

All this is quite complicated. So isn't it better to use applets specifically designed to simplify settings?

Using Third Party Applications

You can find a lot of them today. All you need to do is log into the AppStore or Play Market services from your mobile device and search using the “VPN” criterion. Next, in the results found, you will have to select the desired application yourself, at least by looking at the download rating.

Every user knows how to install a VPN on a phone. Simply click the installation button and wait until the temporary distribution is downloaded and the main applet is installed.

When it comes to the best applets, it's hard to give advice on a case-by-case basis. For example, the Orbot VPN client or the Tor-based Orfox browser work quite well on Android systems. The Super VPN app looks good.

For Apple devices, you can use the same Onion browser, which initially has a built-in VPN client or something else.

Sometimes the performance of an application, unfortunately, may depend on the manufacturer of the gadget. You can't guess here, so you'll have to install each applet and try it in practice. But in almost all cases, the settings are fully automated (with the exception of selecting the fastest VPN server, and even then not always).

Instead of an afterword

That, in brief, is all that concerns the consideration of the question of what a VPN is in phones. Simply put, this is the same as in desktop computers or laptops.

In this case, the operating system as such does not play a special role. But on mobile devices, access to anonymous online proxy servers is almost never used, since in this case the use of tunneling technology with encryption looks much simpler.

The mobile office today has ceased to seem like a phantom and a technology of the transcendental future. Smartphone users have the ability to run applications and work on the go - while traveling abroad, on vacation, and even outside the workplace during business hours. But is it so easy to configure applications on a smartphone so that they “catch” a corporate network protected by harsh system administrators? With the help of a VPN server, even an inexperienced user can do this.

VPN (virtual private network) is a network technology that provides access to corporate network resources outside its perimeter, for example, from home or another office. It allows you to secure data transmission over the network, since its use does not involve public communication channels: that is, a device connected to a VPN channel is virtually located within this network, but can physically be anywhere where there is Internet. Typically, such access is provided to employees who often work from home or from branches, but with the development of smartphones and mobile applications, this technology has become in demand among mobile workers who do not part with their phones either on vacation, or at lunch, or in a train carriage or car. on the way to an important meeting. How to provide them with access to the organization’s network?

As a complement to regular VPN networks, there are VPN servers adapted for the use of mobile devices. The difference between them is that such devices often change the communication channels they use - it can be a 3G/4G network, and then Wi-Fi, which greatly complicates the work of a traditional VPN server (it sees connections from different IP addresses and subnets, but cannot maintain a dedicated communication channel for them). As a result, applications from the smartphone periodically lose active connection and do not work. To prevent this from happening, VPN servers use additional authorization systems, for example, IPsec, which allows data exchange for mobile devices that often change their network settings, but are located within the same operator network, or SSL for more flexible authorization in the web interface.

For a long time, only smartphones based on Symbian OS and Blackberry, and Windows Mobile communicators were suitable for using a mobile VPN connection, but with the advent of the iPhone and Android on the market and the gradual displacement of the leaders, VPN can be “upgraded” on Google Phone and iPhone. . Let's see what needs to be done for this using the example of the VPN service HideME.ru.

To connect mobile VPN access on your smartphone, you need to enter the network connection settings - they are located in the Wireless networks - VPN section. In HideME.ru you need to select the type of device to connect to the VPN - from mobile devices there are ready-made wizards for connecting via PPTP/L2TP in Android and iOS, as well as for other devices in a similar way. The service provides a list of VPN servers through which traffic is tunneled (that is, data is transferred to and from the Network), provides a common IPsec network protection key, and the setup can be considered complete. To ensure compatibility, the VPN can be switched to a mode without L2TP protection. What does the VPN service from HideME.ru provide?

Firstly, this provider provides 2048-bit encryption of all traffic both at the application and network levels (that is, even an open Wi-Fi connection becomes secure). Secondly, resources that have regional restrictions become available to users (for example, watching videos on Youtube, the author of which prohibits their viewing in Russia, or online radio, which does not work in Europe, but is available to users in the USA). Thirdly, VPN allows you to bypass P2P traffic restrictions imposed by cellular operators for fans of torrents and Skype calls (to avoid network congestion and diversion of subscribers from their own voice services). Fourthly, a VPN through a foreign Internet provider can work faster than the “native” one, which will be appreciated by those who like to send large amounts of data.

Naturally, we control the entire process of working with a VPN - the user can change their IP addresses and open/close ports, making their Internet sessions anonymous and secure. HideME.ru has several tariff plans, which can range from 1 day of work with VPN to 2 years (including a discount for long-term use), and the cost of the service is about 1 ruble per day when purchased for a year or more. You can also test the service absolutely free for one day.