can be configured per application

wireguard can too using network namespaces

not exclusively as an interface in kernel mode

Which devices are you people running where you want VPN/proxy but don’t have kernel permissions to run wireguard? Firefox on iPhone? Porn on wifi washing machine?

Curious, what is SOCKS5 used for that regular wireguard cannot do? I’m only familiar with the use case of telling Firefox to connect through a SOCKS5 proxy, which may be convenient as a form of split tunneling - only firefox traffic goes through the VPN and everything else through clearnet - but wireguard can be configured into a split tunnel form as well with a bit more work, and works for all software not just the ones aware of SOCKS proxies. Is it for use on a system where your permissions are too limited to turn on wireguard but not so limited that you cannot change Firefox proxy settings?

Talescale is a VPN, “private network” is what P and N stand for. It’s just one with only forwarded ports and no outbound traffic. The question was are forwarded ports important, and yes they are. So important that some users pay for a VPN twice! Once for something like Mullvad with no port forwarding, and once for Talescale for port forwarding. It’s true it has benefits like static IP, but even on my commercial VPN I get the same forwarded IP and port when connecting to the same server, so I don’t want to pay twice.

I run a Minecraft server. Couldn’t have done it without port forwarding.