On Tue, 20 Aug 2019 13:14:04 -0700, Mike Easter wrote:

Are you running/accessing the VPN from your router or the individual device?

Hi Mike,

Thanks for attempting to be purposefully helpful, as I admit I don't know
networking well - where all I do to access any public VPN service is...
a. I download any VPN config file (e.g., from http://vpngate.net)
b. I essentially doubleclick on that file (which makes the VPN connection).

I've written a tutorial on how to set that up but that's all I do.

I don't even know how to "put" the openvpn client on my SOHO router.
How is that even done? (It's a basic Netgear WNDR n router.)

Anyway, it's the normal way to connect to a VPN service with the exception
that I have scripts that constantly switch me among thousands of public VPN
services randomly all day every day - but essentially it's no different
than what I described above.

To get on VPN - I simply doubleclick on any of thousands of VPN config
files which open up in the OpenVPN client - which connects me to the free
VPN service.

The main problem is that this method uses the HOSTS file of the VPN
service, where all I ask of a Windows networking expert is...

Q: How to use my own HOSTS file when connected to a VPN service?