Current blocked site/geolocation policy

[vangosh 3]

Hello,

What is the geolocation situation, really?

 

The airvpn.org home page still advertises --in tiny print-- airvpn as a way to get around geoblocks

Circumvent censorship, georestriction and traffic shaping. All protocols welcome. Net Neutrality respected."

The staff seemed proactive at circumventing the blocks, true to the airvpn ethos. Even as some servers got geoblocked, others got through. Those were the best days. 

 

Other VPNs are still fighting the geo battle.

I have been trying a few popular services. It appears they often dedicate a few servers to streaming so they don't have to keep fighting the blocks across their whole networks. It seems like a sensible alternative given the situation. As an aside, they also have presence in more countries, which comes in handy when traveling through Asia. But in general, they fall way way short. 

 

Does airvpn have any plans to address geoblocking more effectively?

For speeds, latency, client software, manual config creation, etc., airvpn is the best overall. I am considering returning to airvpn based on those reasons, and complimenting it with a secondary anti-geoblocking service, or IPTV, to make up the difference. But airvpn already costs more than other services that do have ways around the geoblocks. Having to pay for an external solution makes other vpns look more competitive despite being flaky.

 

If it's a lost cause, airvpn should be up-front about it, just as it is for all the good things it has going for it. Right now, listing it as a feature when it's generally broken, and not having a clear policy or a roadmap for what is going to happen appears deceitful in my opinion. Or is that explained somewhere I missed?

 

Any thoughts?

[corrado 100]

If it's a lost cause, airvpn should be up-front about it, just as it is for all the good things it has going for it. Right now, listing it as a feature when it's generally broken, and not having a clear policy or a roadmap for what is going to happen appears deceitful in my opinion. Or is that explained somewhere I missed?

 

If you read up on a few threads in this forum you will quickly understand that AirVPN is quite upfront about this issue. In a nutshell, it is indeed a lost cause with some services such as Netflix or BBC iPlayer that actively block VPN users. Unfortunately, this seems to be not even hard to do. Frequently changing exit IP addresses as some providers do is not a reliable way to ensure access regardless of any promises some providers make and is - in the end - not a sustainable strategy.

 

 

[Guest]

> It appears they often dedicate a few servers to streaming

 

So if you had say 500 people streaming from one IPv4 that's going to look a little suspicious. Many services can use premade databases, like this one:

 

https://www.maxmind.com/en/solutions/geoip2-enterprise-product-suite/anonymous-ip-database

 

which can be imported automatically to block VPNs; it's a cat and mouse game, and due to the shortage of IPv4's, the cat is going to win more often than not.

 

There's not much AirVPN can do here, and they're not alone - you may find a less popular provider that works, but they will have compromises you'll have to accept.

 

Personally, if a service wants to geoblock I just won't use that service, it's their loss at the end of the day.

[corrado 100]

Personally, if a service wants to geoblock I just won't use that service, it's their loss at the end of the day.

 

To be fair, in many cases it's not the service provider itself that want to block VPN users - Netflix for example has no reason to care where you are located as long as you pay your subscription - it's the copyright holders that want to prohibit streaming of their material from outside the region that was contractually agreed upon. 

[serenacat 83]

People here in Australia with some techo capability, and help through an online forum, have been setting  up an OpenVPN server on their home network, similar to how a business can secure VPN access to office systems from offsite staff. This is usually to get out through the Great Firewall of China, and allows private emails and video calls etc, but also reuse of home geolocation  and subscriptions etc. One use for older laptops etc if better on a dedicated machine, just works via the wifi router.

This has the "fun" of running "guerrilla"/"peoples" information war with The Government, as well. The use of a residential IP address defeats the IP address database problem, and there seems an ability to avoid packet inspection, possibly because the Firewall is aimed at citizens rather than expats doing business and maybe using corporate VPN. But Air style SSL or tls-crypt sheathing would help.

With the increase in 100Mbps and unlimited data deals with ISPs, there is a possible AirBnB model for such VPN server hosting for geolocation access to US, UK, France etc sources, with limited privacy (but still https), and transfer of payment. Not expected to take major income from Air, but another challenge for the Internet.

[fadgadget 1]

Hey serenacat

 

I'm in Oz ... do you have a link to the OpenVPN server forum please?