VPN Setup from Australia

[danielfelice]

Hi Guys!

Firstly, awesome piece of software! Going to make my viewing a lot easier! Well done.

I am from Australia so have purchased a StrongVPN acount with both US and UK servers so I can connect to both UK channels and Hulu. I am trying to make it as seemless as possible, so I don't want to have to change VPN's manually when switching from UK channels (TunerFree) and the Hulu Desktop.

Any suggestions on the best way of doing this? I was thinking of following the VPN setup guide on this site, but instead of killing the UK VPN, connecting to the US one instead? So in effect I'd always be connected to the US VPN, then when I open TunerFree it would kill that and connect to the UK VPN, and then once I exit it it would kill the UK and open the US again.

Just for some background info, at what point does the VPN command scripts kick in? Do they start/stop when TunerFree is opened and closed or when WMC is opened/closed?

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Dan

[Martin]

Dan,

the auto VPN support runs the UK VPN commands when you try to watch a program from the UK, and runs the US command when you watch a US program. You could try go detect if the VPN is already running at the start of the command and not do anything if it is running, e.g. by looking for a running process.

Martin

[Ricardo Montalban]

Hi Daniel, I too am looking forward to accessing the WMC UK/USA programs from Australia. Because of your post I have been looking hard at StrongVPNs website and trying to make head or tail of the options. I chatted to the online reps on the chat utility and they recommended the 4 city Open and PPTP service. I think I will order it and try my luck with Martin's instructions on downloading OpenVPN from that blog site. I guess even if it doesn't work for me I can use the VPN for a while for downloading. I can see you posted this in Jan '11 and it's now June. I am glad to see they don't charge by the GB as I suspect the TV programs would use a lot of those. I would appreciate it if you could post your findings, success or otherwise, so other Aus can do the same. I will try and post also. If you know what the $10 per month switch charges or for, that would be useful. Does it mean that every time you switch from UK to USA there is a charge for that, or is it for relocating your own IP address?

Is there a way we can get in touch via this forum, PMs or such, doesn't look like it actually.

So much to learn.

Cheers.

[Ricardo Montalban]

Hi Daniel/Martin,
I got the StrongVPN account and downloaded their config files(s) in a zip. I downloaded the OpenVPN via the Botsikas blog (version with the
text file password). Now I am trying to follow Martin's instructions and I have a problem. I don't know which of the files from StrongVPN
to include in the config folder, NOR can I tell whether to edit their .ovpn (Config File) or use the one with the OpenVPN. If I WERE to edit the
StrongVPN one where would I put the user_auth.txt reference since it doesn't have one. I am going to post two lists of files, the top lot are what's
currently in the config folder from the installation and the bottom half is a list of what's in the StrongVPN zip file. Any help with what to include
and what to edit would be appreciated. Daniel if you have been there and got your StrongVPN working, or Martin. Thx.

What ended up in the OpenVPN->config folder after installation:-

README.txt
This directory should contain OpenVPN configuration files
each having an extension of .ovpn

When OpenVPN is started as a service, a separate OpenVPN
process will be instantiated for each configuration file.

StrongVPN-udp.ovpn - (the install must have created this to get "StrongVPN" as input)
client
fast-io
dev tun
proto udp

nobind
remote 68.68.47.117 1194
route-method exe
route-delay 2
resolv-retry infinite

persist-key
persist-tun

auth-user-pass vpnuk-password.txt
ca vpnuk-ca.crt
tls-auth ta.key 1

comp-lzo
verb 3

ta.key

user_auth.txt (I created from forum instructions)
my StrongVPN user id
my StrongVPN password

vpnuk-ca.crt

vpnuk-password.txt
my StrongVPN user id
my StrongVPN password

THAT'S ALL FOR THE INSTALLED CONFIG FOLDER

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THEN THERE IS THE CONFIG ZIP FROM STRONGVPN.com
vpn16_ovpn116_69fef273.zip
ca.crt
ovpn116.crt
ovpn116.key (Register key file)
ovpn116.ovpn (Config file)
remote 68.68.47.117 4672
proto udp
ca ca.crt
cert ovpn116.crt
key ovpn116.key
tls-auth ta.key 1
client
dev tun
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
;http-proxy-retry # retry on connection failures
;http-proxy [proxy server] [proxy port #]
verb 4
mute 5
tun-mtu 1500
route-method exe
route-delay 2
explicit-exit-notify 2
fragment 1300
mssfix 1450
ovpn_ddwrt.sh (biggish script file)


ta.key (another registry key file)

[Ricardo Montalban]

I felt I ought to continue this post as I HAVE made some progress, although not ideal progress.
Having installed the OpenVPN as recommended on this forum – the one from the Botsikas blogspot, which has the option in it to accept the VPN’s name and password and store it in a text file in the VPN’s Config File. I went searching for a VPN to subscribe to and looked at StrongVPN as mentioned by the OP above. Not knowing a lot about VPNs, but seemingly StrongVPN had a good deal going of about $7/mth, so I thought WTF join up and learn as $85/yr or so on the Credit Card isn’t a lot really. Joining was fairly painless, they have 24/7/365 online chat help. They supply you with a Config File containing all you need. You just tip out all the contents of the OpenVPN Config File folder except for the text file with the password and VPN name stored during ITS installation, and tip the entire contents of the StrongVPN config file into the OpenVPN Config File folder. Voila, run the OpenVPN Gui program that OpenVPN installs and when its icon goes green you are connected. During the installation of StrongVPN you choose which city you want your IP address to reside in, I chose San Francisco because it’s the nearest to Australia. StrongVPN have quite an excellent user portal on their site so you can use that to change to a UK IP address. After a few changes (5 or so are free per month) they will charge your CrCrd a small fee ($2 or so) per change. This is where you can’t use the automatic change system outlined in Martin’s Word document explaining the use of BAT files called from TunerFreeMCE inside Windows Media Center’s preferences tab. To do automatic changes like that in StrongVPN you would need to open two accounts. Ah, nearly forgot, to change to a UK IP address you have to download a new Config File and put its contents in the Config Folder of OpenVPN replacing what’s there. I suppose the idea would be to keep folders already set up for USA, UK etc and just rename them when you want to invoke that country. I did some post implementation research on VPN suppliers and it turns out that StrongVPN are certainly one of the biggest and certainly one of the cheapest. Initially my downloads were very slow, so I made a mention on the chat line. Turns out that I had started with a UDP protocol in my VPN which was heavily encrypted. I downloaded a TCP version (putting its contents in the Config File folder) and it was a lot quicker, ostensibly less encrypted as well. I am still exploring the speed up advice on their site. It consists mainly of advice on how to choose a good set of DNS servers and they point you to a free program that tests them and installs them for you. This program allows you to store a set or more, so you would have a set for the UK and another set for the USA and get the program to load whichever set for where you were watching overseas TV. It’s up and its working, it’s reliable, it’s just not elegant to switch and you wouldn’t want to switch daily it would be cheaper to have two accounts which would still be cheaper with them than a lot of others seem to be for one account.
FINIS

[SuperbVPN]

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