Holiday home in France - how to setup a VPN?

[#1]

Hi

We have a holiday home in France and someone mentioned using a vpn to get bbc iplayer etc

How do I go about setting this up with our plusnet setup?

[#2]

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): This thread is now in the appropriate board.

[#3]

As you would be in France you'd be using a local ISP so set up with a PN connection is not necessary.

I have subscribed to the free Windscribe VPN which offers 10GB a month traffic but there are payed-for options giving a higher allowance. You then select UK as the connection and all should be OK.

There are also apps for Android and Apple devices.

Edit: What I like about Windscribe (not sure if other VPNs offer similar) is that you can install a browser extension so that only that browser will go through the VPN while all other traffic goes through the normal route.

[#4]

But BBCs iplayer doesn't work in France
ps. using Samsung smart TVs iplayer

[#5]

---

@zombie wrote:

But BBCs iplayer doesn't work in France

---

IYO, though many people would disagree.

Working fine in Sweden this afternoon for my brother via a VPN to my DrayTek router.

[#6]

Exactly, so as per question
How do I set up my plus net vpn?

[#7]

If you want to use Plusnet as your endpoint in the UK you will need a router that is capable of being a VPN server.

[#8]

---

@zombie wrote:
Exactly, so as per question

---

Yes, therefore apologies for my unhelpful reply at post #5. 

[#9]

This is my understanding. I'm sure I will be corrected if wrong.

There are two options being described. The first is to buy a new router capable of operating as a VPN server and install it at your UK address. All your French VPN traffic is then transferred via your Plusnet account using a VPN client of some sort (which might or might not be available) installed in your Samsung TV.

If I understand the Windscibe option, the easiest and probably cheapest thing to do would be to buy a new Amazon Fire TV (currently £69.99) and plug this into your TV. You can then install Windscribe on the Fire TV, connect the Fire TV to your French broadband service, select UK as the VPN destination and off you go.

Edit

Doing a bit more reading there are other VPNs that work directly with Fire TV including the well rated expressVPN

[#10]

In considering using your Plus Net connection you need to need to bear in mind that it would be proxying your connection to the BBC. Why I am stating what some might consider obvious ? Well your Plus Net router will need to upload the BBC iPlayer data to your French home at which point your upload speed on your Plus Net connection become crucial to iPlayers smooth functionality.

Do you know what type of connection you have and what speeds it is connected at ?

Assuming that your Plus Net supplied router has the capacity to operate as a VPN server (I would be surprised if it has but no doubt someone, if you advise the model number, will be along shortly to advise in this regard) this will entail opening a port on your Plus Net router to allow inbound access via the Internet from your holiday home. This means you will need to ensure that whatever VPN server software is running on your router it is regularly patched and up to date. (You could just open the port when you leave for France and close it on your return).

This then leads us onto what type of VPN protocol are you proposing to use to connect

basic overview

technical details

I would suggest that PPTP is a no, no
L2TP/IPSEC is okay
OpenVPN would be the best

Another consideration is how you will actually connect to BBC iPlayer at your French home.

The easiest way will be if you use the same computer (on which the VPN client software is running) that your are launching BBC iPlayer from.

However if you propose to use (say) a set top box or the inbuilt capability of a TV on your French homes network (be it WiFi or physically cabled) then the situtation becomes more complicated. In the latter case you will probably have to configure your French home router as a VPN client to connect to your VPN Server on your home router so that all BBC traffic can be routed over the VPN.

Personally I would suggest ignoring your Plus Net connection and instead use a commercial VPN provider who can look after the VPN server hosting and patching. This will also have the advantage that their bandwidth will be massively larger than your home connection. Whilst this will not be free and whilst it is normally cheaper to pay for 12 months usage at a time, monthly contacts are available.

Most commercial VPN providers also supply the client VPN software to install on your computer to connect to their servers. If you want to force network devices at your French home to use their VPN then your French based router would need to be capable of running VPN client software. Note that routers that offer the ability to run VPN client (as opposed to VPN server) software are at the SOHO level as rare as hens' teeth.

One solution I have deployed for a friend is using a ASUS RT-AC66U_B1 router running Asus Merlin firwmare and a OpenVPN client (which is generally considered to be the most secure form of VPN protocol available). Obviously the Asus solution needed a separate VDSL modem (in his case the standard BT Openreach issued modems of old) but could be say a Draytek 130 modem. Obviously the French situation is unknown

Whilst the above is not rocket science, it does require a certain level of knowledge (its not clear from your post how tech savvy you are).

If you want more advice, we could do with additional information as regards both ISP connections (but in responding do bear in mind this is a public forum)

Cheers

Alan

[#11]

Gosh that's put my brain into overdrive. Can you please explain why the following won't work:

Buy a Amazon Fire TV. Install a VPN app on the Fire TV such as ExpressVPN or Windscribe VPN designed for the job. Set the VPN destination to UK and use the Fire TV Iplayer app on the Fire TV. If my understanding is correct then it would not matter whether this set up was connected to a bog standard router in this country or France.

If this will not work can someone please explain why.

[#12]

Thanks for the posts.
It ain't worth the messing, it's just TV.

[#13]

Hello Baldrick,

I had not spotted your post - i started typing a response to the OP request and was then distracted by other matters for a few hours before resuming and posting ...

Whilst I have no experience of the Fire TV (and profess no particular expertise as to VPN's generally) I can see no reason, given a modern enough TV, why your suggestion would not work.

I use VPN's more for privacy than geo-location spoofing, so am concerned with wider issues like DNS leaks but from reading around I am aware that content providers (eg Netflix) actively blacklist IP's associated with known VPN so I suppose there is always this danger.

This could be a good reason (assuming its fast enough) to use your home Internet connection as a VPN node. That said my commercial VPN connection is not blocked by the BBC

I see that the OP has responded to our posts to advise

"It ain't worth the messing, it's just TV"

which is a shame as there's nothing like a technical challenge.

Best wishes

Alan

[#14]

Thanks for the response. I guess that the two different approaches come down to whether a VPN is required for privacy or just to convince the beeb that you're in the UK, when you may well have paid the licence fee but are temporarily overseas.

This topic has increased my knowledge of VPNs so for me the time has not been wasted.

[#15]

Another option is to use your mobile to watch BBC iPlayer. As long as you're not connected to WiFi, you will be given a UK IP address by your mobile company, so the BBC won't block you.