ANSWERED BBC iPlayer

[palimpseste 1]

Bellatrix is no longer working this morning (29/12) 

Are all the airvpn british exit points blacklisted ?

[santemilion 1]

Bellatrix was working with iPlayer, albeit incredibly poorly, last evening (28th UK time); a 1h36 film took 2h05 to watch as I was cut off every 8-15 minutes with around 85-96 users on Bellatrix at the time. Clearing cookies and restarting the browser was a tedious exercise. Much like everyone else on this topic, I use AirVPN frequently to watch iPlayer. However, my patience is ebbing rapidly having experienced these problems earlier in the year. I appreciate it's the festive season etc and finding a solution at this time may not be that simple. That said, looking through the posts, this has been an enduring issue since months before the festive season. Hence, some feedback from staff would be both useful and possibly delay some of the clients departing for alternative suppliers. There are enough vpn competitors out there and it won't be long before I discard the remaining 50% of my year's subscription and move on. As a last resort, I am emailing a copy of this to the airvpn contact address in the hope it may illicit a solution.

[LZ1 672]

Bellatrix was working with iPlayer, albeit incredibly poorly, last evening (28th UK time); a 1h36 film took 2h05 to watch as I was cut off every 8-15 minutes with around 85-96 users on Bellatrix at the time. Clearing cookies and restarting the browser was a tedious exercise. Much like everyone else on this topic, I use AirVPN frequently to watch iPlayer. However, my patience is ebbing rapidly having experienced these problems earlier in the year. I appreciate it's the festive season etc and finding a solution at this time may not be that simple. That said, looking through the posts, this has been an enduring issue since months before the festive season. Hence, some feedback from staff would be both useful and possibly delay some of the clients departing for alternative suppliers. There are enough vpn competitors out there and it won't be long before I discard the remaining 50% of my year's subscription and move on. As a last resort, I am emailing a copy of this to the airvpn contact address in the hope it may illicit a solution.

Hello!

 

You may benefit from checking the guide to blocked sites in my signature. Note that you don't need to use a UK server to watch something from a UK site.

 

So I assume you tried other servers and protocol combinations. Is that the case?

 

It's an enduring issue because it's not Airs fault what other websites do and Air cannot control their actions. But the consequences are for Air to feel, as you make apparent.

 

Air Staff also already made things clear, but it's tedious for them to keep repeating the same truths continuously: they try their best, but it's ultimately not just up to them, if something works or not.

 

Take care .

[santemilion 1]

 

Bellatrix was working with iPlayer, albeit incredibly poorly, last evening (28th UK time); a 1h36 film took 2h05 to watch as I was cut off every 8-15 minutes with around 85-96 users on Bellatrix at the time. Clearing cookies and restarting the browser was a tedious exercise. Much like everyone else on this topic, I use AirVPN frequently to watch iPlayer. However, my patience is ebbing rapidly having experienced these problems earlier in the year. I appreciate it's the festive season etc and finding a solution at this time may not be that simple. That said, looking through the posts, this has been an enduring issue since months before the festive season. Hence, some feedback from staff would be both useful and possibly delay some of the clients departing for alternative suppliers. There are enough vpn competitors out there and it won't be long before I discard the remaining 50% of my year's subscription and move on. As a last resort, I am emailing a copy of this to the airvpn contact address in the hope it may illicit a solution.

Hello!

 

You may benefit from checking the guide to blocked sites in my signature. Note that you don't need to use a UK server to watch something from a UK site.

 

So I assume you tried other servers and protocol combinations. Is that the case?

 

It's an enduring issue because it's not Airs fault what other websites do and Air cannot control their actions. But the consequences are for Air to feel, as you make apparent.

 

Air Staff also already made things clear, but it's tedious for them to keep repeating the same truths continuously: they try their best, but it's ultimately not just up to them, if something works or not.

 

Take care .

 

Thanks for the info and taking the time to try and help.

 

Here's the reply I got from Staff.

Hello!

We're terribly sorry, BBC iPlayer is not accessible from our infrastructure and it will probably remain inaccessible indefinitely since BBC is progressively restricting access to their services only to IP addresses which have been assigned to residential UK ISPs.

 

Kind regards

AirVPN Support Team

 

So it seems BBC is taking very aggressive action ensure their georestricted policy is strictly enforced. Perhaps a UK based VPN may solve this specific issue?

[LZ1 672]

Air Staff merely confirmed what I already told you - it's out of Airs' hands. You'll note they mention residential IPs too.

 

So it inherently doesn't matter if you change to something other than Air, as those IPs would also just get blocked. 

 

So nowadays it's hit and miss.

 

Such is the problem when sites block users. Other big ones like Netflix are notorious for it too. Best of luck.

[ailurus fulgens 0]

30/12/17 and I cannot get into the bbc iplayer either. Any issues we should know about. Have to try another vpn service.

 

 

[ailurus fulgens 0]

Just tried Bellatrix and it's working!

[bikes02 3]

Just tried Bellatrix and it's working!

 

doesn't work for me 

[Valerian 20]

Other VPN providers that have more success with access to iPlayer seem to change their server IPs whenever the BBC blocks them. Maybe Air could consider doing the same?

[glaven 4]

Bellatrix not working today on OpenVPN for Android. 01/01/18

[b2431521 6]

Air Staff merely confirmed what I already told you - it's out of Airs' hands. You'll note they mention residential IPs too.

 

So it inherently doesn't matter if you change to something other than Air, as those IPs would also just get blocked. 

 

So nowadays it's hit and miss.

 

Such is the problem when sites block users. Other big ones like Netflix are notorious for it too. Best of luck.

 

Sorry, I don't buy this.

 

BBC will be blocking IP's either from publicly available IP lists of VPN services, or on a case-by-case basis, where they detect 20+ streams from one single IP & suspect it is a VPN.

 

AirVPN has a routing server in the UK, GB2, which is hardly used - https://airvpn.org/servers/GB2/

 

I don't understand why they can't route all Iplayer traffic via that server, & when it gets blacklisted by BBC, just contact the data centre & get it issued with another IP. This won't affect any end user connection/configuration as the IP addresses of the servers we connect to will remain unchanged.

 

Iplayer downtime would then be limited to how quickly AirVPN can provision another routing server that isn't blacklisted.

 

Clearly many users find this to be a big deal - I don't understand why this is not worth doing!

[Staff 9973]

BBC will be blocking IP's either from publicly available IP lists of VPN services, or on a case-by-case basis, where they detect 20+ streams from one single IP & suspect it is a VPN.

 

AirVPN has a routing server in the UK, GB2, which is hardly used - https://airvpn.org/servers/GB2/

 

 

The whole range of IP addresses of the dc where GB2 is in is already blocked.

 

We operate in 4 additional datacenters in the UK and we tested other IP ranges in additional datacenters, we don't even remember anymore how many. All of such ranges are blocked.

 

I don't understand why they can't route all Iplayer traffic via that server, & when it gets blacklisted by BBC, just contact the data centre & get it issued with another IP. This won't affect any end user connection/configuration as the IP addresses of the servers we connect to will remain unchanged.

 

Iplayer downtime would then be limited to how quickly AirVPN can provision another routing server that isn't blacklisted.

 

It is more efficient for BBC (or Netflix or anybody else interested in discriminatory accesses) to just black list those IP addresses which stream concurrently more than x streams (the value can be accurately calculated to not affect customers behind a NAT of a residential ISP) while a white list of IPv4 addresses assigned to UK (or any other country) is compiled, which is another very effective solution for all the happy scullions of the copyright industry (except when they wonder how it's possible that file sharing increases instead of going down during time with the new streaming services) or just to contribute to build walled gardens for the fools.

 

 

Clearly many users find this to be a big deal - I don't understand why this is not worth doing!

 

It's not the main purpose of our service, but just a nice side effect, which will probably work less and less in the future. It would be very risky to hope to cover the expenses of our infrastructure with a geo-restriction bypass service, and we never really counted on it. In 2014 or 2013  we advertised this side-effect for a few days in the home page, and we quickly stopped because we saw it as a mistake with no future (it looks like we were right, unfortunately).

 

However, as you could read before in this answer, this does not mean that we don't care about you: we have employed time and resources to make BBC accessible.

 

Kind regards

[glaven 4]

It looks like BBC iPlayer with any VPN provider is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

 

Here are a couple of workarounds:

 

1. Kodi iPlayer addon usually works for live steams with any UK VPN (for catch-up the VPN must not be blocked).

 

2. https://easyview.eu is OK for UK TV SD live streaming (no VPN required).

[Guest]

 

Air Staff merely confirmed what I already told you - it's out of Airs' hands. You'll note they mention residential IPs too.

 

So it inherently doesn't matter if you change to something other than Air, as those IPs would also just get blocked. 

 

So nowadays it's hit and miss.

 

Such is the problem when sites block users. Other big ones like Netflix are notorious for it too. Best of luck.

 

Sorry, I don't buy this.

 

BBC will be blocking IP's either from publicly available IP lists of VPN services, or on a case-by-case basis, where they detect 20+ streams from one single IP & suspect it is a VPN.

 

AirVPN has a routing server in the UK, GB2, which is hardly used - https://airvpn.org/servers/GB2/

 

I don't understand why they can't route all Iplayer traffic via that server, & when it gets blacklisted by BBC, just contact the data centre & get it issued with another IP. This won't affect any end user connection/configuration as the IP addresses of the servers we connect to will remain unchanged.

 

Iplayer downtime would then be limited to how quickly AirVPN can provision another routing server that isn't blacklisted.

 

Clearly many users find this to be a big deal - I don't understand why this is not worth doing!

 

You clearly do not understand how IP blacklisting works, or the fact that we have literally ran out of IPv4's, and are getting more and more expensive due to the short supply. It is pathetically trivial to auto-block IPv4's or any other metric (v6, account blacklisting). 

 

If streamUsers > 5 block for 30 minutes

if streamUsersStill > 5 block for 24 hours

 

You can't just "ask" for a new v4, because it'll just get blocked within seconds anyway. If any company wants to block VPN's, it's so, so, so easy. Nothing AirVPN (or any other VPN provider) can do. 

[LZ1 672]

Stickied, locked and solution marked, to clarify AirVPNs position on this issue.

 

Note that as with any other site, whether it's Netflix, Hulu, iPlayer or something else, it's sometimes possible to get through and sometimes isn't.

 

By stickying these threads, we can hopefully help make the Blocked Sites forum a little more readable and useful.