Country restriction avoidance router VPN advice

[giopas]

@fovocifer it seems quite technical to me, could you please direct me to some easy reading?

@CaptainSTX I have enrolled for a 7 days trial and installed the widget (very convenient). But I found 2 problems so far, even before testing the actual VPN connection (I had no time yet):
1) the widget on the router is only accessible from within the LAN. Meaning that if you access to your router from outside your LAN, you see the widget logo, but if you click on it, it tries to resolve it as 192.168.1.1. I escalated this to the support service and I hope it will be fixed in the future.

2) during the trial period you only have access to some county's VPN. E.g. no German nor Italian VPN... (But you can ask for a trial period of 3 days to have the complete list available).

 

[RMerlin]

I should use "dig mydomain.com a" and add all IPs to do so, right?

Correct, assuming you are actually trying to connect to mydomain.com, and not www.mydomain.com. You can't resolve every entries within a domain like that.

 

[giopas]

uhmm, ok, I will then try to see if by chance Astrill Site Catcher can help on this...

 

[giopas]

Two questions:

1. once installed and activated Astrill widget on my router, what shall I do specifically with the port ? Shall I forward it in the router or not (since Astrill IS on the router, I don't think this is needed).

2. In the Astrill wiki it is told to use Google DNS (i.e. choose option "Connect to DNS Server automatically: NO"). Why this is needed? Can I keep my automatic DNS settings instead (as I have seen than otherwise my NAS is no longer accessible)?

Thanks folks for your advices. I am very noob in VPN world...

 

[RMerlin]

Two questions:

1. once installed and activated Astrill widget on my router, what shall I do specifically with the port ? Shall I forward it in the router or not (since Astrill IS on the router, I don't think this is needed).

2. In the Astrill wiki it is told to use Google DNS (i.e. choose option "Connect to DNS Server automatically: NO"). Why this is needed? Can I keep my automatic DNS settings instead (as I have seen than otherwise my NAS is no longer accessible)?

Thanks folks for your advices. I am very noob in VPN world...

If you want to hide your traffic from your ISP, then you typically don't want to tell their DNS the hostname of every single site you are about to connect to. Hence the use of a public DNS.

 

[giopas]

Ok. In my case, I don't mind to tell my ISP which sites I surf on, especially because if I change them I can no longer connect to my NAS from remote ( ).

Going back to my questions above, I have been told that if I put Astrill on the router, I don't need to forward any additional port. Is that right?

For the second question, I have actually seen that I can keep my standard DNS for my usual internet surfing, and put Astrill DNS on the Astrill widget (so to use them only for the VPN).

 

[RMerlin]

No idea about the Astrill-specific questions, I've never seen their applet.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Ok. In my case, I don't mind to tell my ISP which sites I surf on, especially because if I change them I can no longer connect to my NAS from remote ( ).

Going back to my questions above, I have been told that if I put Astrill on the router, I don't need to forward any additional port. Is that right?

For the second question, I have actually seen that I can keep my standard DNS for my usual internet surfing, and put Astrill DNS on the Astrill widget (so to use them only for the VPN).

With Astrill no need for port forwarding. If you have an application that requires a port forward Astrill give you a port that is yours to forward as required. As an alternative for an additional fee you can get a static IP from them.

As for DNS Astrill routes your traffic using their own DNS servers. You may be able to over ride this and use your own, but it has been awhile since I fiddled with this setting.

 

[Pamela Tennyson]

Hi all,

I am looking for a easy to setup (and cheap) VPN to overcome some ip related restrictions.

What I am looking for is something with the following characteristics (besides the rest):

1. It can be easily be set on an off on our router (RT-AC87U in my case),
2. you can easily change IP country from the router GUI interface or in an easy way,
3. you can restrict the VPN to a given ip (e.g. my NAS) and/or to a given application (e.g. Google Chrome) and/or a given domain.

What do you use, what do you suggest?

Thank you!

giopas

ps: I am currently using Hola.org on Chrome, but I am not sure it is a good idea

Hi, giopas..

I use Free VPN Network.
Rarely gives me any problems.

 

[giopas]

Hi Pamela, is there an Italian or French VPN available?

 

[DomFel]

Suggesting HMA! or Buffered. Buffered has higher speeds (useful if you have more than 50mbps WAN), but HMA has got much more servers around the globe and its cheaper.

 

[sfx2000]

You are asking for help to do something that is illegal in most of the countries. You better watch out and understand why we are not willing to support you, as we want to stay in the legal boundaries of our countries...

Not sure if it's illegal or not, but many times this will violate terms of service for the content providers in that country...

So perhaps, rather than explicitly state what/how to do, it's perhaps better to suggest what not to do

Kind of like back in the days of US Prohibition, where there were guides on how to "not" make things...

 

[System Error Message]

There are 2 ways around country detection. 1 is through proxy/vpn and the 2nd is by changing your OS settings to another country. A proxy does better than VPN in hiding where you're from since a VPN only changes the IP and not the settings such as browser, OS, locale, etc whereas a proxy can be configured to change all those.

 

[kvic]

VPN by far is the most straight-forward way for users to comprehend and deploy and get started enjoying actual content. But it's least efficient way.

Web proxy is slightly better on efficiency. Unblock-Us alike is so far the most efficient way I believe but it requires ongoing maintenance though minimal.

If you're paying for a service anyway to bypass geo lock, Unblock Us the like is a better option actually.

 

[giopas]

Web proxy is slightly better on efficiency. Unblock-Us alike is so far the most efficient way I believe but it requires ongoing maintenance though minimal.

If you're paying for a service anyway to bypass geo lock, Unblock Us the like is a better option actually

Hi kvic,

could you please elaborate more on Unblock Us? from what I read here I would just need to change DNS settings on my router. What else should I do then? E.g. I want to access mydomain.com from Germany while I am in UK, what should I do?

Have you tested it on asuswrt-merlin?

What is the minimal ongoing maintenance you are referring to?

Thanks,

giopas

EDIT: stupid question. I use duckdns.org and myqnapcloud.com, two dynamic DNS host services, to connect to my router and NAS. If I change DNS on my router with other which are not of my provider, will such DNS host services continue to work? As everything works pretty well, I don't want to screw everything up -> ANSWER: no, everything (at least with Google DNS) works perfectly. In worst case you have to flush DNS cache and/or browser cookies.

EDIT2: second stupid question. If I use Unblock-US DNS, will all the sites see me as being in US (or whatever country I choose) or just those listed in their site?

EDIT3: UnoTelly has a feature that Unblock-US seems not having: the possibility to use different countries on different devices (Dynamo DNS).

 

[kvic]

could you please elaborate more on Unblock Us?

Sorry, I might have confused you rather than giving you a pointer. Unblock Us is good for well known content/media services such as Hulu/Netflix/etc (e.g. US Netflix has a much bigger media library than any other countries). If Unblock US doesnt cover the websites/services that you have in mind, then it's no good for you.

I haven't used in the router. Given quite many ppl like DNS Filter (which I have no experience either), you can combine DNS Filter + Unblock US. Can setup a guest SSID that hooks to this particular DNS Filter setup. Then from client, say your Android phone, you connect to this guest SSID for media consumption.

Though similar thing can be said of VPN. It is less efficient because routing traffic at lower layer. Most VPN also enforces encryption which is redundant for media streaming.

 

[giopas]

Therefore you are saying that if you only need unrestricted media content streaming the best solution is using Smart DNS?

 

[kvic]

Therefore you are saying that if you only need unrestricted media content streaming the best solution is using Smart DNS?

At least you don't need to manually switch vpn client. Guess why Asus increases to five clients in recent firmware..

 

[giopas]

Ok, I gave UnoTelly a very quick test.

Configuration on asuswrt-merlin is very easy, even if not documented on their site:

1. go on UnoTelly site and register yourself for the free trial
2. check the DNS assigned by UnoTelly
3. open your router and go to Advanced Settings -> WAN -> Internet connection tab -> WAN DNS Setting section -> put the following information: Connect DNS automatically: NO and then IP addresses on DNS Server 1 and DNS Server 2. -> Click on Apply.
4. always on your router go to Advanced Settings -> NAT -> DHCP Server tab -> DNS and WINS Server Setting section -> put the same IP addresses on DNS Server 1 and DNS Server 2. Leave "Advertise router's IP in addition to user-specified DNS: YES" and "Forward local domain queries to upstream DNS: No". -> Click on Apply.
5. Reboot the router (don't forget to do it).
6. Go to UnoTelly site and you should have the confirmation that DNS settings are well configured.
7. If you want (and have a dynamic IP), put information of your dynDNS in the relevant section to ensure your router's IP is always known by UnoTelly.
8. Download on Apple or Google Store the UnoTelly app and, from within the same LAN, choose the country you need to use for each specific service. You can do it on the website as well (always if you are in within the LAN, but on the app it is much easier).

Now I will test the service and if it works, I think I will use this instead of Astrill VPN, which seems very good, but it has the hassle of having to manually entry relevant IPs for the desired domains and you cannot access mydomain.com from let say Germany and mydomain2.com from let say US at the same time, which you can do with UnoTelly instead (provided you are always on the same network).

 

[DrTeeth]

Hi,

You are asking for help to do something that is illegal in most of the countries. You better watch out and understand why we are not willing to support you, as we want to stay in the legal boundaries of our countries...

With kind regards
Joe

That is an outrageous allegation. The OP could just as easily be wishing to operate his router legally in his domain. Changing the locale is not illegal. Why people always assume that such questions are asked for nefarious purposes I do not know.