Guides
What we have worked out about sharing a connection, written for people deciding whether to.
Does sharing your phone's connection drain the battery? What we measured
We benchmarked our own Android sharing node in June and found it using 76% of one CPU core to move 32 Mbps. Here is what that number actually meant, what we fixed, and what we have not.
A direct VPN connection can still be the wrong path
Two SparkUp paths were both direct. One moved about 42 Mbps; the other managed roughly 1 Mbps. Connection type alone was not a useful quality score.
Why VPN speed drops over time: the bottleneck may not be the network
Our VPN speed test fell from 77.4 to 16.6 Mbps in twelve minutes. The link was not getting worse. A control loop was measuring the wrong delay.
VPN or proxy: which one do you actually need?
The difference that matters is how much of your machine goes through the tunnel, and whether DNS goes with it. A practical guide, with the leak that catches most people.
How to use your home IP address while travelling: five ways compared
Router VPN, Tailscale, a travel router, a commercial VPN, or a sharing app. What each one gives you, where each one breaks, and which survives a household whose only always-on device is a phone.