Just had a WhatsApp from the Domestic Strayan who is in Barcelona and is irked that she cannot access Sky Go while in Spain. I would be very grateful for VPN recommendations. NordVPN and ExpressVPN come up in Google searches but that doesn’t really mean they are any good.
You should be able to set up your own for this purpose. OpenVPN is what I use on my Pi, your NAS might have something built in.
Basically you configure it and install on your phone or other device, and by running it on your phone you route your phone’s internet connection via home, and hence all your services will think that you’re in the UK.
You can also access your music etc.
Errrmmm, I haz the technofear…
Thanks, I’ll give this a try.
It’s quite cool once you have it working, because your phone just acts like it’s on the home WiFi, with full access to your NAS and streaming services the same as at home.
1 Like
I use Express VPN. Dead easy to set up and pretty useful. Doesn’t fool BBC iplayer, but successfully tricked Channel 5 so I could watch the Cricket final in France.
1 Like
Only issue you may have with a VPN back to your own kit is your broadband upload speed. When you VPN in and stream SKY etc it will be coming into your house via the download bandwidth but will go out to you remotely via the upload bandwidth and this speed may be limited as it’s generally much much less than your download bandwidth.
Rule of thumb I use is upload is around 10% of your download speed, VPNs also reduce the bandwidth (anywhere from 10-60%) and increase latency.
It should be ok to VPN to/from home for most things but streaming video may have issues.
True, if you have ADSL it might struggle. I have 20 meg up.
Avoid Nord for reasons, the points about upload speeds are well made
I use ipvanish it’ll trick netflix into letting me on to the us version pretty quick too.
When my son was at the uni and he did his year abroad in China, he used ExpressVPN, one of the very few vpns that actually worked there.