On hotel Wi-Fi, at a coffee shop, anywhere — your laptop's entire internet traffic exits from your own home connection, encrypted the whole way.
No commercial VPN exit server — your traffic exits on a gateway you control, and HostAnywhere can't read it.
A commercial VPN moves your trust from the airport Wi-Fi to a VPN company — your traffic still exits on someone else's servers, under someone else's logging policy. An Internet Gateway removes the someone else: traffic leaves your laptop encrypted and comes out of a computer you own.
The local Wi-Fi can't read your tunneled traffic. Websites see your gateway's public IP.
In the dashboard, open the device whose connection you want to exit from — your always-on home machine, for example.
One dropdown in the device's Internet Gateway section. Optionally rank a Secondary and Tertiary for failover.
Within ~10 seconds, your other devices route through it — check any what's-my-IP site and see your home address.
See how to select a gateway and route your devices through it:
Rank up to three of your own devices — Primary, Secondary, Tertiary — and the network always uses the highest-priority one that's online. A common setup: your always-on home server first, your work machine second, a small cloud VPS third. If your home internet drops, traffic falls back to the next gateway within seconds, automatically.
Traveling abroad with a home computer back in California? Your traffic exits from California. Gateways in more than one place? Pick which one your devices route through. Your exit point is wherever your hardware sits — your call, not a vendor's server list.
| Internet Gateway | Commercial VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your traffic exits | Hardware you control | The vendor's servers |
| Who operates your exit | You | The VPN provider, per their policy |
| IP websites see | Your gateway's own IP | Shared or dedicated VPN IP |
| Failover | Across your own devices, automatic | Provider-managed |
| Cost | Part of the Developer plan | Usually a separate subscription |
A commercial VPN relocates your trust: your traffic exits their servers under their logging policy. An Internet Gateway has no third party — traffic flows encrypted between your own devices, exits on your own hardware, and HostAnywhere never sees it. Different goal, too: a commercial VPN gives you a shared anonymous-ish IP; this gives you your own IP, anywhere.
No, by design. Websites see your gateway's public IP — your home, office, or VPS. It protects you on untrusted networks and keeps your exit somewhere you trust; it doesn't hide who you are.
Your traffic exits wherever your gateway device sits. A device (or a small cloud VPS) in another region means services see you connecting from there.
As fast as your gateway's connection — upload speed matters most, since everything you download travels up from the gateway to you. Strong home uplink or a VPS = fast gateway.
Automatic failover: rank up to three devices, and traffic falls back to the next one within seconds. Active connections may briefly drop while traffic moves over.
No. Your traffic is encrypted between your device and your gateway; when a direct connection isn't possible, HostAnywhere relays may forward the encrypted packets, but they cannot read the contents. Websites see your gateway's public IP rather than the network you're sitting on — they may still infer the gateway's approximate location from that IP.
Internet Gateway is part of the Developer plan and above; only the network owner can enable it. See pricing.
Set a device as your gateway in the dashboard — your other devices follow within seconds.