iCloud+ Private Relay versus Firewalla DoH
Recently Apple announced a new free feature (coming soon) that sounds like the Firewalla DoH (DNS over HTTPS) call iCloud+ Private Relay.
I use DoH on my Firewalla and wondered how these two services might compare?
Can they be run together or would they clash?
It sounds like what Apple has done is a step further in not tracking where my traffic is going since they use what they describe as a two-hop approach. Here is what Apple has said about the two-hop Private Relay...
“The first assigns the user an anonymous IP address that maps to their region but not their actual location. The second decrypts the web address they want to visit and forwards them to their destination. This separation of information protects the user’s privacy because no single entity can identify both who a user is and which sites they visit.”
In this How to Geek article they further explain it saying... "The two-hop approach is novel since it relies on a first party (Apple) and a third party (a trusted partner) to anonymize your browsing activity. Apple will know who you are since you’re using its service, but not where you’re going since the destination is encrypted. With the second hop, the trusted partner knows where you’re going but has no idea who you are since your IP address is anonymized."
Would Apple's Private Relay be a better choice over the Firewalla DoH? At this point I think the answer is yes.
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Thanks for the quick response.
Since "Private Relay" is a VPN that encrypts everything, am I correct in assuming that means that my DNS request (website address lookup) and IP address are encrypted using Private Relay? Therefore it is doing more than what DoH did? And if the answer is yes, then I wouldn't need the Firewalla DoH running on my Apple devices but I could set it up for any non-Apple computers or devices on my network. I think if I left them both running together that they would clash as I originally asked.
Payment/Cost - Yes it would only work with subscribers to a paid subscription to an iCloud storage account with Apple. The lowest level of subscription on iCloud is for 50 gig storage and that only costs $1/month. You would get Privacy Relay (and other iCloud+ features) for that price. So you would get a VPN for $1/month.
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