NordVPN closes Meshnet feature on 1 December: what it means for users
NordVPN has announced that its Meshnet feature will stop working from 1 December. Nothing will change for the VPN service itself, but all Meshnet features will be disabled. This means that users will have to look for new tools to connect devices, route traffic through personal gadgets or share files.
Here's What We Know
Meshnet was once considered one of the boldest chips of the VPN market. With its help, it was possible to connect devices through an encrypted NordLynx tunnel, bypassing third-party servers. This allowed, for example, to access your work email from your laptop while travelling, access a friend's home media server, play games remotely on another computer or even watch subscriptions from your TV at home - all this from anywhere in the world.
A major plus - Meshnet was completely free. But as NordVPN admits, the product never found a mass audience. For geeks and techies it was interesting, but for the majority of VPN users the value was too niche: people more often use the service to protect traffic or bypass blocking, not for remote working tasks.
Meshnet allowed secure access to other devices regardless of their location. Illustration: NordVPN
For those who still used Meshnet, the company advises to prepare for the shutdown in advance. For file sharing, you can switch to NordLocker (3 GB free of charge) or familiar clouds like Google Drive. For remote access, NordVPN recommends the ZeroTier platform, which allows you to connect up to 10 devices for free.
The VPN market again shows the simple truth: sometimes even "cool" technologies can't withstand the banal statistics of demand.
Source: NordVPN