VPN for Netflix in America

July 25, 2014 10:45 PM

Please help me sort out using a VPN only for traffic going to my Roku.

I want (all?) the traffic for (two) specific devices on my network (Rokus) to go through a VPN so that I can reclaim some of the bandwidth that I am already paying Verizon for when using Netflix. I'm in America, and I'm disinterested in masking that since it may cause problems with Netflix or Amazon Prime, etc., if it suddenly looks like my Rokus are in Argentina or whatever.

I'm seeing some indications that DD-WRT will let me tunnel just specific MACs or IPs through a VPN, but the reports are infrequent enough to leave me with doubts.

Has anyone succeeded in using DD-WRT or similar firmware to persistently put selected non-PC devices on VPNs for Netflix, etc.? What were the gotchas that had to be resolved? And what's the best VPN for the money in this scenario?

posted by NortonDC to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

It seems like a lot of people are doing this with the Asuswrt-Merlin firmware for Asus routers. Here's a pretty long thread about it on the SmallNetBuilder forums (which is sort of hard to follow, because each poster has their own special requirements about devices, ports, etc. But basically, you set your Rokus up with static IPs and have a script like this one run automatically. While I have no personal experience with doing this kind of selective routing, I do run that firmware on an Asus RT-N66U and it's very good. I have set up a VPN with it and that part works fine as well.
posted by zsazsa at 12:13 AM on July 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm doing this right now in Azerbaijan. I use strong vpn and it is $10/month. I tried flashing an old router with their dd-wrt configuration but I couldn't get it to work so I eventually bought one of their pre-configured routers. I bring it with me to Azerbaijan, hook it up to the house router, and connect the roku and all my stuff happily. I usually set up the roku and my other stuff before I go just in case.
Also, the strong vpn staff are really nice.
I cancel it when I leave and it is easy to do online.
Only downside is that Hulu has started blocking recently on the ip I chose. I could probably switch to a different ip, but then I would have to download a new configuration script. 5 minutes of work but I am lazy.
posted by k8t at 12:39 AM on July 26, 2014

We did this with Tomato USB firmware on an Asus, with no issues. We used Private Internet Access for VPN (after having issues with Hide My Ass being a little flaky). We live in Canada and wanted Hulu/American Netflix/etc.

To do it like we did - set up Tomato USB, then SSH to your router and set up some filtering just for the devices you want. We attached WD TV streaming devices to each TV. Then we gave them static IPs. Then I ssh'ed to the router and set up the config to selectively route using info here:
Refer to lfjeff's post #43. I also set the router to automagically start the VPN up on boot.

Later we changed our minds and switched to unblock-us for simplification purposes, but that VPN worked pretty well for over a year.
posted by routergirl at 10:21 AM on July 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

unlocator is the way to go.
posted by wei at 9:18 PM on August 9, 2014