Instant Guard

The idea of offering a free vpn through your router is fantastic but I noticed the connection drops and I have to reconnect over and over which makes it less usable. I don’t think this is a hard fix as other vpns are already doing such.

I decided to take this app for a spin. I’m using it with a RT-AX86U router currently running 86 constant connected clients with a quest network, reserved IP’s and QOS enabled. All newer WiFi6 setting and enabled. The good: It connected to the home router and configured everything automatically. This is great to use when your on a public WiFi like hotels, coffee shops, airports, and more. It give a secure IPSec VPN connection to your home internet and home network to reach things like a NAS. Yes, you don’t have to share your NAS out with a vendors cloud and risk your data, you can use this app to access your files when your away from home. If you are not technical and want a VPN for when your in public that’s easy to set up then I definitely recommend this app. What can be improved: More information on the app would be nice. Even in the web admin page under VPN it’s not clear in tech info. So you have to hunt for it in the setting of your phone and system logs. So if you need the IP assigned check your phone setting once you connect. This info might be needed to configure your firewall access on a server or NAS. The Bad: This had a slower upload by half compared to using my OpenVPN configuration that is maxed out on encryption levels and authentication. DO NOT use this app for a VPN tunnel to the router if you are connected to the WiFi. As of today my router crashed all three times and restarted. Some may want to do this is they feel the WiFi has been compromised or you have a computer/client on the network that may be infected. Although I can also do this with the OpenVPN configuration. I have submitted this issue and suggestions of more information through the feedback on the app.

I’ve been checking back on the app every few weeks to see when this issue would get resolved. You can see my original review titled “Broken” from about a month ago for more details on that. But I just checked it again right now and it’s finally working and my device now shows up as available. Clicked on my router and it finally works! What’s odd though is I didn’t see any updates for this app, and I haven’t pushed through any firmware updates for my router, and I don’t think I have my router set to automatically update either so how did this just start working? They changed something somewhere without our knowledge? Anyways.. I have to check my router version later to confirm about the auto update being off so who knows. Only thing I know I did recently was accept some terms for trend micro to grab my data when I wanted to use QOS but don’t think that would of done anything for this... very odd but hey I’m just glad it’s finally working!