How can I set up a VPN that will use the client IP address for the connection?
I want to set up a VPN that uses the client's IP when sending data out of the VPN server. I am able to use either OpenVPN (open-source edition), or Wireguard.
Not necessarily. VPN can be used for that, but I'd be that more common use case is to access networks which are otherwise firewalled off from the public internet, like corporate LAN.
I do wonder about when VPNs started being used as proxies... Back when I was in school, we'd use HTTP proxies for HTTP, and SOCKS5 proxies for everything else. I remember I'd try searching for free web-based proxies too.
I guess VPNs being easier to configure and automatically applying to all apps (since they're just networks that can have routing rules) helped.
I do wonder about when VPNs started being used as proxies…
About at the same time operators at the US noticed that they could profit from profiling users behaviour. In here that's very much illegal thing to do and most use cases for VPN is to connect yourself into corporate network. VPNs are of course useful to protect you from MITM attacks at open wifi networks and things like that, but hiding your behavior from your ISP is very much an US thing.