Why won't my TunnelBear open?

How long does it take TunnelBear to connect?

The time depends on your Internet connection speed, Wi-Fi signal strength and number of available servers.

When you first connect to TunnelBear, it takes some time to connect to the closest servers and to sync the data from your other devices (smartphones/tablets). If the connection is slow, it might take longer than usual. When the speed improves, you can expect the connection time to get better. In the future, we are planning to implement a dynamic connection check mechanism. This would mean that we will only connect to our servers, when you are connected to the best possible connection and also show you this fact in the user interface. The connection time has been reduced since we added this feature.

I can't log in! Make sure your Internet connection is working. Try another computer or mobile device and repeat the login process.

Try logging in with a different password. It is common to forget your password after a time, but we haven't added this functionality yet. If your old password isn't working, click here to reset your password.

Your email address doesn't seem to be valid. Did you get an email with instructions on how to reset your password? If you did not receive an email from us or if the password reset instructions were not successful, please contact us directly at info@tunnelbear.com to have your password reset. We may need access to your email address so that we can help you reset your password.

I want to create my own VPN. Can I do this with TunnelBear? No. TunnelBear is a VPN service. The TunnelBear website explains all features and functionality. Please see the site for information about creating your own VPN.

I lost my TunnelBear password. How do I recover it? If you forgot your password, you can reset it. Go to Password Reset. Log in with your username and password (you should receive an email with instructions). If you are having problems resetting your password, please contact us directly at info@tunnelbear.com

Can I share the password with someone else? Yes, you can share your password with someone else. When you are logged in, there will be a share button below the log-in button. Click the button and then enter the email address and password of the person you wish to share with.

Why does TunnelBear take so long to connect?

The problem is that our site takes 1 minute to load because of the sheer number of files it must upload.

With an average broadband download speed of 1mbps, it takes 5 seconds to upload one 1GB file. This is a real bottleneck for us. The workaround is for people to use a WiFi device (access point or laptop with a USB adapter) to create a VPN tunnel and connect from their mobile phone/tablet/smartphone to TunnelBear when the device isn't connected to the internet. It all works great in TunnelBear's sandbox.

Why does TunnelBear use UDP to send "pushes" to your phone even when you're not connected to the internet? To allow people to use a wireless connection that doesn't have sufficient speed to upload the files it would take to stream a game on Youtube. We do this so we can send the files that our site need to make a session available through WiFi while the user isn't connected to the Internet at all.

We've found that most mobile data plans allow for more than 15MB/s throughput at one time, but a typical broadband connection offers only 1 to 3 MB/s. We need to download a full 1GB in a few seconds as soon as the user enters our site, in order to start the process of connecting them to their session on TunnelBear. We figure using a WiFi router like this solves the problem:

How long are the VPN sessions made by TunnelBear? Since your own computer is the primary device, it is responsible for sending our site the file that tells us which devices are connected to which VPN session on your account. Once the sessions reach the maximum length set in your preferences, the program stops asking you to choose which clients to add to a session.

What are TunnelBear's recommended download speeds? The maximum session upload speed (connection speed needed from users) is 1MB/s; however, our Sandbox solution allows users to set this speed to 10 times faster. When uploading is slower than we want it to be, why does the VPN connection only last for an hour? Even though you have specified how many minutes of VPN sessions can be made, when an user sends us 100MB, we stop after 60 minutes and create a new TunnelBear session. Your total amount of VPN sessions could be less than 60 minutes, but you'd lose all the bandwidth those sessions would have consumed.

Does TunnelBear work on Android?

I tried it yesterday using my Galaxy 3, and although it did connect and download the web page correctly, I never did get any email. I am a user of a tunnel from a different provider, and my provider gives me free incoming web at home (a static IP, so I can have a computer and a mobile at home). My provider requires the username/password be sent via email for each connection I set up (even if it's just a browser, and not an entire connection as with TunnelBear, just because they are stupid), but my phone does not send emails on a normal basis. I can only assume it sends to my spam folder, which is empty.

This has worked before, but for some reason stopped working today. When I opened my browser's history on the phone, the webpage was there, but I wasn't getting a connection. Does this mean TunnelBear doesn't work on Android? What would cause it not to work? I've been using TunnelBear for two years, and that's the only time it didn't work. Other programs I've used on my phone work fine, like BitTorrent Sync (which I thought is the same program, since TunnelBear states it connects to Tor). Is it possible my firewall was up?

Re: Does TunnelBear work on Android? Sorry for answering my own question, but I found answer! My phone was acting odd. In fact, the email was bouncing around like crazy (it was actually still getting to my other mail account). When it finally worked, it took me to this page where I had to click on "Start".

Once I did that, I clicked the button "Show me the test results" and a page came up with a bunch of codes. I had to copy these codes into a new tab in the page I was trying to log in to TunnelBear from.

Once that code was in there, it showed me the login screen. The issue was something they said they'd address - I think they were trying to add some verification, but didn't have enough time. So what I did was login to my email through a normal browser and copy/paste the two codes into the URL for that email.

It then seemed to work fine. Thank you, TunnelBear!

Why won't my TunnelBear open?

How can I create a tunnel between 2 servers?

As the help section tells you. You will first need to start by setting up a virtual server, using your favorite control panel. Once done, you will need to setup your public and private IP's which you want to tunnel through. These are normally set in an hosts file in your PC.

For example, I have both a public IP of 209.85.222.55 (ip1), as well as 192.168.10.2 (ip2). The hosts file looks like this:
# Hosts File. # ------------------. ##### IPV6-HOSTS. ##
### 209.55 1 localhost. (I also host several webpages). # Tunnel Bear. # Use this IP. IP=192.2 Port=5005. # Use these ports. Port1=2525. Port2=8080. If your host file already exists on the computer where you wish to have the VPN configured, your configuration will be: IP=169.254.1
# You may also use the following if you are running a DHCP server. DHCP=169.4 # Or any free IP address that is not already in use. #DHCP=192.100 This is where you will set which port you want to tunnel through. So for instance, TunnelBear tells you to tunnel through port 8080 (default). This would be set up in the same way, but for port 8080 (or however many ports you wish to tunnel through):
IP=209.55 Port=8080. # Or any free port that is not already in use.