For example, I run WireGuard on several Ubiquiti EdgeRouters. It will also work on Mikrotik, Tomato, DD-WRT, and many others.

Yeah, and a lot of people don't realize that until they've left.

Is it the reason I also run an OpenVPN on TCP/443, because many places block non-standard ports (Wireguard is UDP and usually in the high numbers)?

Another reason to keep an OpenVPN around if possible as I'd noticed when I was traveling overseas I'd had pretty bad UDP packet loss, but TCP had a better chance of getting there.

So you have to install some open source firmware pretty much?

Not necessarily, depends on the router. Some routers have support for WireGuard built-in.

Google is your friend if you are actually interested in this, there is plenty of information available on this.

Regards

Looks like a bigger priority is to upgrade to 6E or later.

I Googled a bit, some are running SFF boxes to run a WG VPN server or flashing open source firmware on some routers.

I’m running pfSense as my router. It’s based on BSD. It’s the best open source router/firewall out there in my opinion. The challenge, as it were, is that you would need to have your own hardware for it.

Ha, I have done that in the past. I’ve also run it in the past on port 53 (DNS) to get around Gogo’s captive portal. I only mention this now because they’ve already plugged that gap, but it was a nice run. :D

More than anything, it’s because I have his traffic on a separate VLAN, and I was just too lazy to setup a new instance of WG. Not even sure that’s possible (yet) in pfSense.

You can buy an appliance that runs pfSense from Netgate, too, if you want.

I finally got YTTV working overseas. I have to give YTTV credit, they are just about the hardest nut to crack. First they do IP tracking and then they must have a great list of VPNs to blacklist. I tried so many on TorGuard which was my old VPN. The IP tracking is infuriating because you can pretty much only watch things that are live in your new area or fully completed. Makes a football weekend a bit tough. College football is the one thing that is really difficult abroad to watch. (The NFL Gampass is really cheap if you VPN to Colombia to buy it, and it seems to work fine with just about any foreign VPN). My Dad has YTTV so I was hoping it would work abroad but they seemed to either detect the location or the VPN and zaaap its "unavailable in your current country" or "unavailable in your location". If it gets really picky it'll ask you to verify your location by logging into YTTV with a mobile device. My next step was to setup a spare android phone to spoof the location, but I tried Reddit first.

I saw on Reddit you can get an IP location spoof extension for Chrome (its called Location Guard) so I set that up in the same city as my Dad (YTTV only lets "family" be in the same city). This seemed to get past the location restrictions when I was in a different city than my Dad while still in the US. I also got a new VPN called PrivateInternetAccess that has a "streaming" VPN that YTTV doesn't seem to have blacklisted. So for now its working. If ya wanna try PIA, might be able to get it for free as I did: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/topca...n-1-2-3-years/

I don't have the technical ability to setup a private VPN at a family member's house, but that would be great. Is there an off-the-shelf cheap router that is plug and play for this?

I agree and YTTV is a pain in the butt to use outside of the US. I'll try your method later, but I'm hoping for something easy peasy. I generally catch up on my YTTV recordings when I return to the US. They are saved for nine months.

While there is definitely something to be said to using non-commercial, private VPNs if able to do so to the extent desired, there is a broader use case for going with commercial VPN providers -- particularly those commercial VPN providers that allow for country-specific selections for VPN servers.

It really can help to pick a VPN that allows you to select from a VPN with the server in the country where an online transaction will take place. For example, some companies may have different anti-fraud measures applicable to online transactions that seem to originate from a local IP address than those originating from a foreign IP address. [Sometimes it's better for the prospective online buyer to use a non-local IP address with US bank cards for an attempted online purchase, and sometimes it's better for the prospective online buyer to use a local IP address with US bank cards for an attempted online purchase.] The same bank card could work with a local IP but get rejected with a foreign IP. Or the same bank card could work with a foreign IP but get rejected with a local IP.

I’m just bummed out when US streaming sites up their VPN detection software. In November, it was Peacock. It just started working again last week. Today, Hulu stopped working.

This is often related to fraud or security. A lot of companies need to filter out IPs from "bad actors". Unfortunately many VPN providers don't always update their allocated IP addresses. A recent issue for a member was how their IP was showing somewhere else when they were in Bangkok (or vice versa, I forget). For the banks, many filter out known VPN allocations due to fraud attempts.

Depending on what the use case, when I am out of the country, I have a computer/VM that I can remote into and then do what I need to do then (eg, online banking). VPNs are handy, but not the cureall.

That's due to VPNs changing their IP addresses. All the streamers randomly scan inbound IPs and if their address states X or Y (VPN names) then they just filter it out. Part of why VPNs don't always update their allocations with the correct info.

Which service are you using?

Are they only detecting commercial service VPN providers or also detecting private 1:1 VPN connections, ie Open VPN?