Who writes on VPNSmith
Our team: who we are, what we benchmark, and why we take this self-host obsession seriously.
Eric Gerard
Founder · Self-host VPN and GDPR VPS specialist
Affiliate marketer for 12 years, former network admin at an industrial SMB (Cisco CCNA in 2014, expired but solid foundations). I launched VPNSmith because nearly every French VPS / VPN comparison recycles vendor spec sheets without explaining anything. On this site, every WireGuard guide is built from official documentation, public specifications and reproducible procedures, with the exact commands so you can verify and measure everything yourself on your own VPS.
My path starts in 2010 as the network admin of a French industrial SMB: three remote sites, two Cisco ASA firewalls, and ownership of an inter-site IPsec tunnel before WireGuard even existed. That role is where I saw the gap between VPN vendor marketing and the reality of a tunnel that has to hold up over time. I passed the Cisco CCNA certification in 2014 and then moved into tech-affiliate publishing. On VPNSmith, I approach self-host with a sysadmin mindset: reading RFCs (RFC 4303 ESP, RFC 7296 IKEv2, Donenfeld's WireGuard documentation), following kernel-module release notes on Debian and Ubuntu LTS, and writing reproducible procedures (exact commands, configuration options). I publish under my full name and personally answer technical questions via the contact form.
Question about a WireGuard setup or a VPS benchmark? Email me directly at contact@vpnsmith.com - I reply personally.
Areas of coverage
- WireGuard and OpenVPN setup on Contabo, Hetzner, OVH, Scaleway
- Reproducible iperf3 throughput benchmarking methodology
- Linux hardening (UFW, fail2ban, auditd, sysctl)
- GDPR jurisdiction comparison (DE, FR, NL, FI) vs non-EU jurisdictions
- DPI obfuscation (Stealth, Cloak, V2Ray, Shadowsocks) for Iran/China bypass
Our extended team
VPNSmith is edited by Eric. The technical guides are built from primary sources (official documentation, RFCs, open-source repositories) and from procedures you can reproduce yourself. When a figure depends on your hardware or connection, it is presented as such and paired with the command to measure it.
Sources & verification
Technical claims are tied to verifiable primary sources: vendor documentation, RFCs, official WireGuard/OpenVPN repositories, kernel-module release notes. Links to those sources appear in the relevant articles.
Reproducibility
For measurable items (iperf3 throughput, MTU, RTT), the article gives the procedure and the exact commands so you can get your own numbers on your own infrastructure, rather than unverifiable results.
Editorial standards
Every article published on VPNSmith follows the process below, without exception or shortcut.
Claims tied to sources
Any article containing technical claims (MTU parameters, protocol behaviour, prices) links to a verifiable primary source. Unsourced or non-reproducible claims are removed.
Reproducible figures, not unverifiable in-house numbers
Rather than asserting unverifiable measurements, pages give the procedure and exact commands (e.g. iperf3) so you can get your own numbers on your own VPS - which depend on your ISP and region.
Source and affiliate-link transparency
All commercial links carry rel="sponsored nofollow". A permanent banner at the top of every article explains our affiliate relationship. No commission ever influences a verdict.
Regular review
Pages are reviewed regularly because prices, resources and jurisdictions change. The frontmatter date (datePublished / dateModified) reflects the last actual content review, not a cosmetic CI build.
Conflict-of-interest disclosure on every page
Pages containing affiliate links carry an in-page disclaimer (visible banner) + HTML rel="sponsored nofollow" on every commercial link. No exception, even for multi-vendor comparisons.