The internet is full of advertisement and articles convincing that you should have a VPN for a lot of different reasons, and they are most often true, however over the past few years helping out the folks at PiVPN , I have noticed that people often don’t know exactly how to make a proper use of a VPN especially where to place it according to their needs, having this said, lets take a look at a few use cases and where the VPN should be placed according to your needs.

VPN at home/office

Let’s try to make it simple, you will want to set up a VPN server at your home or office if your objective is to access your home or office network and devices when you are elsewhere.

This setup is also useful when you are out of home or office and connecting to the internet through public networks such as a pub, bar, cafe, public transportation, this way all traffic is encrypted by your VPN tunnel and protected from whoever might be sniffing the network traffic.

Because all the traffic is only encrypted between your computer and your VPN server, this setup DOES NOT protect your traffic from your ISP.

How can i setup a VPN at home?

If this is what you need then please take a look at PiVPN it makes the whole process of setting up a VPN at home way more simple and all you need is a raspberry pi.

VPN Server placed outside of home/office

Trying to keep it simple again, this is where you want to have your server placed if you want privacy above everything and you don’t require access to any local devices when you are outside of your home/office.

You will want this one especially if you want to hide your traffic from your ISP.

This means that wherever you are when you connect to the VPN Server you will have your traffic fully encrypted and hidden from your ISP, or any other network where you might be connecting from.

How can i use this kind of VPN server?

To use this kind of VPN you can search the internet for paid VPN services, or if you want to have your own, just fire up a VPS server and build your own, you can also use PiVPN for this.

Hope this post helps you to understand VPNs a little bit better and which one to use regarding server placement.