MikeJ

I forgot about my Zoom router which must be in a drawer somewhere - I only ever used it for 3g. You may have an interesting conflict with two Wifi zones in the same room - make sure you set a different channel on each router.
BTW I have actually connected my smart box to the Priinet router using an Ethernet cable rather than wifi.

uk_grenada

Dns services intended to allow you to steal streaming services are being blocked wholesale by most services. VPN services are much harder to block but that hasnt stopped the bbc trying for iplayer in the uk, but the better vpn services have already bypassed their blocks.

You can install a vpn directly on some routers, higher end asus and nighthawk routers are pretty east, its also possible to replace the routers os with open systems that support openvpn directly, eg asus have asuswrt.

BUT

Though it sounds nice and simple, there is a performance penalty of even the best vpn's, and its nothing to do with them normally. Your isp cannot know whats gping on in your encrypted tunnel so they usually prioritise it as low priority browsing, so expect to only get 10-30% of your normal capacity.

HOWEVER IMHO

you do need the vpn for some stuff like viewing streaming bbc, which at hd is perfectly possible in 1.2 mb, but you dont want everything else to have to go and compete via vpn, so only use vpn on a device by device basis and only when needed, eg in the uk, you need a vpn to access piratebays website properly but once you have got your bittorrent file downloaded, p2p doesnt need it, though if you are security conscious you can use it.

You can of course setup a router as your vpn router and plug it into your other router and generate a vpn wifi and an open wifi.

Fred James

I have to disagree. Most sites are available with Smart DNS while many are now blocking some VPNs, BBC iPlayer being a recent example.

It may be different where you are located, but in Spain DNS seems to work fine.

uk_grenada

Whats happening is lawyer creep, the owners of copyright are the mainly american/uk based companies. When they negotiate new annual-ish agreements with end user suppliers like sky hulu amazon etc they are increasingly requiring prrof of operational technical blocking to limit users to the country being paid for. The platforms that do this are managed by people like cisco interestingly, they are increasingly sophisticated. You will get blocked at some point. It is a game between them and the richer vpn providers and there is no sign that a war will be won, just that battles are won or lost then guerilka warfare restores an equilibrium soon thereafter for the better suppliers users. Now ask who are the better suppliers - and i guarantee nobodys goung to tell, to avoid putting your head over the parapet. We have p2p vpn to look foreward to shortly, that will be a game changer.

InVinoVeritas

Well I was referring to the NowTV box and the NowTV Windows App, neither works properly with SmartDNS any more and if you go on the Sky forum they are quite open that they are now blocking access for SmartDNS. I'm not sure if they can detect that the geolocation data has been stripped away or if they have some other way of knowing.

uk_grenada

When you ask a dns service to do its thing, you say 'my address is blah and i need the ip address for www.sky.whtever, the hiding services change/hide your sending address, but when your request gets to sky at 1.2.3.4 it has the sending address which has to be a real ip address but is the sending dns services spoofed - at which point sky choose to ignore it. Simple.

A vpn is a permanent redirection via a local ip address, much heavier data handling required but sky cannot argue that its in the required country but if they know its an address from a dns or vpn provider they might block it, ut if the vpn provider is swapping its sending addresses around valid domains, sky cannot legitimately block it.

InVinoVeritas

My understanding is that SmartDNS services do NOT hide or change your IP address, they simply strip out the geolocation data by routing that (limited data) through a proxy server.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_DNS_proxy_server

uk_grenada

What geolocation data do you refer to? There is nothing like that required in the header frame, how before devices had gos did the world know where your pc was ? Your ip reveals your location, they have to change the return address to their own then pass the response back onto you. Once your device knows the ip address you talk to the service direct, but if the service you actually want is fronted/guarded by something that can decypher your real return address....

Fred James

I have a NOWTVbox but I don't have a Sky package on it so cannot comment on whether it works with a Smart DNS. However I also have SkyGo which gives me access to all Sky channels and that works fine with SmartyDNS.

Jon-Bxl

Thanks for this.... Wow its complicated for a non- technical person like me. I think I should wait a while to see how the vpn technology changes to combat the 'lawyer creep'.

Great to know there are experts out there willing to help untangle all this 'stuff'

Jon

uk_grenada

Remember its an ongoing-forever war, battles are never won long term by the suppliers, i wouldnt bother to wait, but buy into a good vpn service that covers all the device types you use, and has decent support - which means you have to go with a decent service.

InVinoVeritas

I can't check whether it works for me on SkyGo as I gave up on my satellite subscription when I switched to NowTV as even with a 1.2m dish my satellite picture was quite poor.

Fred James

It just seems odd that Sky would block NowTV but not SkyGo.

uk_grenada

Give them time...

Fred James

Apart from the rights management issue, there is no financial reason why Sky should block either of them as they are getting paid for both options.

They are far more concerned with the loss of revenue in the UK and elsewhere from card sharing systems. They have now stopped the HD options but you can get the whole Sky package in SD for as little as £12 a year. This is a far bigger financial exposure and has nothing to do with geo blocking.