Setting up PIA Independently for use on specific programs

Kuro

To better explain the Title, I want to be able to use PIA on specific select programs (aka, qBittorrent) while leaving chrome and steam and discord, etc, untouched. I want to avoid getting lesser speeds on various places like youtube and nerfing my download (even if its only a little) on things that I'm not dying to protect. 

How would I go about doing this? Is this even possible? If you would say not to do it this way, why would you say that? Would you say using PIA's Proxy is faster instead if I plan on doing it mostly for qBittorent?

OpenVPN

Kuro said:

To better explain the Title, I want to be able to use PIA on specific select programs (aka, qBittorrent) while leaving chrome and steam and discord, etc, untouched. I want to avoid getting lesser speeds on various places like youtube and nerfing my download (even if its only a little) on things that I'm not dying to protect. 

How would I go about doing this? Is this even possible? If you would say not to do it this way, why would you say that? Would you say using PIA's Proxy is faster instead if I plan on doing it mostly for qBittorent?

https://helpdesk.privateinternetaccess.com/hc/en-us/articles/229653027-Can-I-Exclude-An-Application-From-Using-The-PIA-Software-

Max-P

From the article:

Because of the complexity of the setup and the possibility of leaking data outside the VPN connection (which can introduce security risks), we do not support split tunneling at this time.

That 100% is the primary issue with this kind of setup. I run such a setup (mostly because I can) and I can confirm it's a massive PAIN to configure even when knowing exactly what you're doing. You essentially have to override the OS routing decision which usually involves creating (and maintaining) a second routing table for which you do some trickery to make the OS send the traffic to the VPN with firewall tagging. You also have to make sure the OS will track that connection properly and not send half of it through the main connection. Ensuring the isolation of what only uses the VPN and what only uses your main connection is even more trickery because if the VPN dies the whole setup goes away with it, so you have to script it too.


My personal favorite solution for this is to just run a virtual machine, and run the VPN inside that virtual machine where you can just enable the killswitch and use the app normally. Lightweight Linux distributions are pretty good for this, and OpenVPN performance on Linux is significantly better and more reliable as well. 

Kuro

Max-P said:

From the article:

Because of the complexity of the setup and the possibility of leaking data outside the VPN connection (which can introduce security risks), we do not support split tunneling at this time.

That 100% is the primary issue with this kind of setup. I run such a setup (mostly because I can) and I can confirm it's a massive PAIN to configure even when knowing exactly what you're doing. You essentially have to override the OS routing decision which usually involves creating (and maintaining) a second routing table for which you do some trickery to make the OS send the traffic to the VPN with firewall tagging. You also have to make sure the OS will track that connection properly and not send half of it through the main connection. Ensuring the isolation of what only uses the VPN and what only uses your main connection is even more trickery because if the VPN dies the whole setup goes away with it, so you have to script it too.


My personal favorite solution for this is to just run a virtual machine, and run the VPN inside that virtual machine where you can just enable the killswitch and use the app normally. Lightweight Linux distributions are pretty good for this, and OpenVPN performance on Linux is significantly better and more reliable as well. 

This is unfortunate. PIA is actually really good with its VPN that I practically no reduction in speed (thats noticeable) and my download remains high and quickness in loading websites as well. I was aiming something for my parents where bittorrent and ONLY bittorrent uses the second network. It currently can't even download off my primary so I just need a away to disconnect pia from making it my default network and sending everything to it, if I could just turn it on and use it independently with that one program....

I can do complicated stuff, like using a virtual machine, but my parents cannot, and it would be to much for them who are not exactly computer literate. It took them a full year to learn how to use find *safe* torrents and use/download it.