Hi guys. I am currently trying to setup Usenet, however I cannot decide wether or not to keep it in or outside Gluetun. If it's inside Gluetun, the downloads speeds seem to be A LOT slower compared to outside of Gluetun. Is it fine to split the two networks, or is there a specific reason as to why we keep it inside the VPN? (other than masking IP I guess?)
5 replies
tomspark wrote:
Good instinct to ask. SparkBox keeps SAB inside gluetun by default for one reason — a single uniform kill-switch so nothing can leak. But Usenet is genuinely different from torrents: it's one TLS connection to your paid provider, no swarm, no peers, no DHT. There's no public-IP exposure the way torrents have — the only party who sees your IP is the Usenet provider you already pay. So running SAB outside the VPN is a legitimate, common setup, and the speed gain you're seeing is real (VPN overhead + server throughput caps; Usenet can saturate your line, the tunnel often can't). The tradeoff: your ISP can see you're connecting to a Usenet host (it's TLS, so not what you're pulling), and you lose the one-tunnel simplicity. Splitting them — SAB out, torrents in — is a perfectly defensible default.
tomspark wrote:
Honestly it's a small edit, not a hassle — one caveat first: SparkBox's media compose gets overwritten on sparkbox update, so a hand-edit won't survive upgrades yet (there's no first-class "SAB outside VPN" toggle — I'm logging that as a wanted option). The change, in modules/media/docker-compose.yml: on the sabnzbd service, remove networkmode: service:gluetun and its dependson: gluetun block, and attach it to the sbmedia network with its own ports: ["8186:8081"]. Then delete the - "8186:8081" line from the gluetun service (it lives there now only because SAB shares gluetun's netns). sudo sparkbox restart media and SAB comes back on the same URL, just outside the tunnel. Happy to walk through any step if it snags.
tomspark wrote:
Appreciate it. And you're not the first to want that — it's on the list as a proper toggle rather than a manual edit. No timeline to promise yet, but the demand's noted. Enjoy the faster Usenet.
Seez wrote:
So if I wanted to split them, what would I need to do to get started? 😀Would it be easy to configure, or a hassle?
Seez wrote:
Awesome. Yeah a "SAB outside VPN" toggle could be nice (I assume a lot of Usenet users would love having the option to switch between outside/inside VPN). Also thanks, Tom, for the detailed answer! I appreciate it. 😎