antitouchscreen

Is there anyway of circumventing Netflix's blockage of international IPs?

While I realize this is less than legal, watching movies on my computer while abroad is one of the primary reasons I got Netflix.

Dubai Stu

Use a VPN such as hotspotvpn, witopia, purevpn, etc.

aly

vpnod also works; didnt have much luck with witopia though

gfunkdave

I bet you could just forward the appropriate port(s) over an ssh connecton, for those of us with ssh hosts in the US.

antitouchscreen

vpnod worked PERFECTLY, thank you!

aly

great to hear...!!

Error 601

I use AceVPN with a DD-WRT router in L2TP mode to use a Roku with NetFlix in Canada.

aly

this sounds interesting; so does that mean you do not need to do a sperate VPN login per computer; and that its done directly on the router?

how are your speeds with AceVPN pls?

bp888

Whenever I've tried to learn about VPN, the articles that I found online are a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo to me no matter how hard I tried to understand it, let alone implement it. So naturally I was intrigued when I saw this thread.

I signed up for a VPNOD account at vpnnod.com. I followed the super-easy instructions on how to set it up on my Mac. And in a matter of minutes I now have the VPN icon on my menu bar and let's me connect. I turn it on while surfing at home and it's working. Yay!

Having said all that, I have no idea what it does, why I need it and when do I use it, especially while traveling (aside from Netflix streaming while overseas).

Maybe somebody here will be kind enough to give me an idiot's guide to VPN.

aly

as far as i can tell this is a way to indicate your presence in a specific location;
for example in USA if u want to connect to geo based apps;

BUT businesses use it as well to connect to their company servers when out of the company zone; ie USA cie but u r in Europe;

this redirects data via another server so as to modify your real IP address; or location.

gfunkdave

FromWikipedia:

pennywern

Streaming normally uses UDP, so forwarding it over SSH (which requires additional shenanigans in any case) would not work that well.

With UDP, if a chunk of data doesn't appear, the application just moves on with its life. You might hear a glitch in the audio or see some chunking on the screen.

However, SSH uses TCP, which presents data to the application in sequence. If something goes missing, then it waits... and waits... and waits. This will magnify a sub-second audio glitch into a 20-second dropout. If your connection is at all erratic, the delays will start to cascade and eventually the stream will stop entirely.

VPN is definitely the way to go. OpenVPN is easy to install if you have your own server, and works very well, with free client software available on every significant platform.

alanh

The VPN is sort of like the old expatriate standby, the mail forwarding service, which would work for Netflix physical DVDs.

You give Netflix an address in the US. As far as they know, that's where you get your mail. They mail a DVD there. Someone at that location puts it in another envelope and mails it overseas to you. When you're done, you mail it back to your forwarding service. They take it out of the international envelope and put the Netflix envelope in the US mail. Netflix has no way of knowing you're overseas.

Exactly the same thing happens with a VPN. The data from Netflix goes to a network address located in the US. That site forwards the data to your overseas address, and forwards data you send back.

aly

^i like your explanation, simple.

Error 601

Yes, it is unbelievably easy - you just select the VPN as the WAN connection, enter the supplied server, username and password and all the traffic through the router goes through an american IP address.

The speeds actually vary greatly - but I have never had much difficulty with Netflix other than the odd buffering delay.