Using OpenVPN for Netflix, Hulu, etc

[The_Ogre]

I have a VPS hosted in Dallas, TX which I cannot recall why I bought it - I think it was on a special of $20 for a year.

So over the weekend, out of boredom, I installed CentOS and then OpenVPN - I don't know too much of Linux, so I was following guides from all over the place until I eventually managed to connect to it.

I then tried running Netflix, looking for House of Cards, season 4 to confirm that I'm connecting from the VPS and was surprised to find it

Next step was to check whether it would actually play. After 30/45 seconds of buffering, lo and behold it started playing! I let it play for around 30 minutes and it played fairly well, no quality issues.

I have a couple of issues:
1) The long delay before it starts to play - this could be either due to the low specs of my VPS, or network speed from the data centre to the internet.
2) I tested this with the laptop, so I'll need to find a way to get my router working (DD-WRT has an OpenVPN client built in), this will then allow me to use the Roku and the android devices.

So this is more of a heads up to anybody wanting to do a DIY jobbie. Also, OpenVPN allows 2 concurrent connections from different IP's to the server, so you can split the cost of the VPS with a buddy to save.

 

[The_Ogre]

Small update:

Something must have been downloading at the time while I was testing this over the past weekend as when I did it again last night it was working as fast as the subscription services that I've used in the past

I've also discovered that there is in fact a way to have your router automatically connect and log into the VPN server. I have a slight concern of whether the hardware (router) will be able to handle more than one video stream at a time - considering the overhead (encryption, etc) - with quality.

The idea is to use split tunneling so that all video streams (as well as *.netflix.com, *.hulu.com, etc) will go through the VPN tunnel while everything else goes directly onto the Internet.

 

[Necropolis]

The idea is to use split tunneling so that all video streams (as well as *.netflix.com, *.hulu.com, etc) will go through the VPN tunnel while everything else goes directly onto the Internet.

Just be careful with that - I'm sure I read somewhere that Netflix was using a whole bunch of different domains for it's streaming and authentication services...

 

[The_Ogre]

Small update:

I haven't gotten anywhere since I've written the previous post. My problem is that my current DD-WRT router is too weak to encrypt/decrypt OpenVPN. I need a more powerful one with at least 8MB of flash, and those ones are a bit pricey.

So I started thinking, what if I use my Pi as the VPN gateway on my LAN? Theoretically that should work (did some research, and it actually does).

The only problems I'm sitting with now is my daughter stole the MicroSD card out of the adapter for her tablet, so I need a new one to put Raspbian onto.

The second hurdle is to get a wifi dongle with a Realtek chipset which allows you to enable master mode (to allow you to act as an Access Point).

The idea is to have the Roku, TV Box (bedroom) and any device who needs access to Netflix, Hulu, etc connect to this newly created access point, which would then connect the OpenVPN client to the server on the VPS in the US, which will get the stream and pass it backwards via the AP to the requesting device.

This would mean that my LAN and the LAN created by the AP would be logically separate. The AP will get a NAT'ed address via DHCP from the VPS server. This will cause a bit of inconvenience since we use our phones about 99% of the time to control the Roku and TV Box - this would mean wer'd have to disconnect from our main wifi network and connect to the SSID broadcast by the wifi dongle to change change shows, etc. To get around this I'll be creating a VLAN with the DD-WRT router to which the Pi is connected to pass packets between the networks - of course this means I'd need to manage the IP's carefully

Right now the only delay is Takealot, and I doubt they'll deliver over the weekend, so I might only get the hardware next week.

 

[The Secret Turnip]

You don't need to make a separate WiFi AP, separate network or anything like that. Just install your Pi (let's say you make it 192.168.0.2 if your "normal" router is 192.168.0.1), install OpenVPN and get it to connect to your VPS and enable routing on your Pi between the LAN and the VPN connection. Then setup your devices with static IP addresses, use 192.168.0.1 for the router/gateway if you want appear as coming from SA and 192.168.0.2 if you want to appear as coming from your VPS.

I was using a server I created on Microsoft Azure as I have plenty credits to use there. It was working very well but it stopped working after Netflix started their VPN crackdown.

Weird that they didn't pick up yet that you are coming from a data centre IP and not from a residential IP. Can you tell me (in PM) what's your data centre and IP?