pgerend wrote:
that worked. it was the VPN. what's up with that?
VPNs inherently mess with IP routing.
Worse, too many of the first-few-hops VPNs are provided by sketchy entities, are perfectly sited to collect personally-identified metadata, and all while badly solving a problem that hasn’t existed for a decade or so by providing negligible added security benefits with a doubled tunnel and that second tunnel ends at the perfect metadata collection point.
Outside of geo-shifting for website testing or CDN testing or ilk, I’d avoid using first-few-hops VPNs. If you want the claimed connection privacy, consider the existing end-to-end encrypted tunnels and enabling iCloud+ Private Relay with ODoH. If you really need a first-few-hops VPN and privacy is a concern and with less risk of logging, consider running your own Algo VPN server.
PS: several years ago, some of the no-logging VPNs were caught logging when their “non-existent” logs leaked onto the ‘net. And any service presented with a legal warrant will turn over all of the data and metadata they have, of course.
Above info is for first-few-hops VPNs, and not for a VPN intended to connect into the internal network of an associated organization.