Homemade VPN

So ive finally deemed myself pretty experienced with open vpn and setting them up in conjunction with a ddns server... I have the hardware.. I am just wondering will a homemade openvpn tunnel encrypt and secure my traffic similiar to how PIA or strong vpn or any of the others do. I mean outgoing internet and web traffic not internal LAN traffic.

Places that I want outgoing encrypted..

MY home (where the server would be setup)

At work

At school.. 

 

I will be routing through TCP and not UDP for compatibility on all networks since some universities notably mine block UDP.

I plan to also have SSH/socks5 on my browser as well..

Any ideas that i might have forgotten or overlooked. and does it serve the same function as PIA

 

The vpn will encrypt traffic between the client and server. So if you're outside your network your traffic will be encrypted back to your server, but it will then be sent out over your internet connection unencrypted. So if you want a Vpn to protect you while you're on a public network then it will work great, but if you're worried about your ISP or online privacy and that sort of stuff the  it won't do much for you.

One big function PIA has is that it's connected to their own Tier 3 network. So after it leaves your local ISP server it hops onto their network which helps stop ISP routing shenanigans. Also, it helps hide your specific IP address since it used their server's IP to send the requests and then their server sends the data back to you.

As well as stated above, the connection between your computer and your server will be an encrypted tunnel but from your server to the internet is still fair game.

What you can do is actually set up a NAS or give your server a decent amount of storage and cache websites that you commonly visit/are interested in. This way when you access those site you're not actually going out to the internet to get the data, just accessing what's already stored on your server.