PROXY SERVERS

[richard]

Not sure if this has been raised before. Mods correct please if so.

How easy is it to get a proxy server in the UK and what's it cost?

[JimmyGreaves]

Richard

I used these people last year on a free trial to watch an Irish Rugby game from RTE. They quality was excellent.

http://www.ukproxyserver.co.uk/proxy-so ... xy-server/

[Jose]

if you want to use sky player the you will need a uk vpn.

[wpcoe]

I got tired of blocked sites and blocked videos in Thailand so I signed up for Strong VPN (http://www.strongvpn.com/) and it works seamlessly in the background. I don't see why it wouldn't work in the UK.

I mucked around with several free VPNs, but subsidizing advertisements, throttled speeds, and/or lack of invisibility were not so pleasant.

[Pleng]

Very easy

But you'll need to pay; around £6 per month. The free ones are no good for watching live TV.

[richard]

I signed up for Strong VPN (http://www.strongvpn.com/) and it works seamlessly in the background. I don't see why it wouldn't work in the UK.

I

Brilliant and thanks

Hooked up tonight for an annual fee of 55 US$ All looked a bit weird to me but they did a remote changing of all my settings and I'm up and running. Service and support seem excellent.

After too many retirement years in HH I was shocked back into the real IT world. Instantly reminded me of my last IT consultancy days with Hewlett Packard in the UK Bristol research laboratories
12 years ago. All laptop tweaking was done remotely by gurus in Bristol wherever you were. Seemed strange at the time to see someone playing on your computer and adjusting files and settings. Scary though as now someone may have sucked any useful information out of my laptop

[richard]

Phew

Did a re-boot and no internet connection at all for 3 minutes. Oh shit, what have I done?. Then all up and running

Can someone who knows tell me how all this stuff works please and in layman terms. I'm running Win 7 with a 3BB package and now this new thing floating around my machine

Incidentally the reason I went for a remote server is to watch sport and avoid all the 'bloody security conscious UK institutions' saying that despite my UK address, UK bank, UK doctor I have a Thailand ISP

[JimmyGreaves]

Basically they impersonate where your coming from. As your internet is supplied by 3BB you are coming out of Thailand. You get re-routed to a UK proxy that then say goes to the BBC website who now thinks your coming from the UK and Voila!

[magobligin]

I have installed strongvpn which is working wonderfully well for me and which has excellent remote technical backup available however... I want to subscribe to Netflix and/or Hulu but cannot because both sites are US and will not accept my UK address/postcode for credit card purposes.

Any suggestions?

[Pleng]

Unless you can get a US credit card registered at a US address, I think you're probably out of luck on that front I'm afraid.

[magobligin]

Thanks Pleng... may have to convince my daughter in California that I am a good risk.

[richard]

Three observations since going 'StrongVPN'

1) Movie and music downloads (Vuse) seem to be faster
2) Avast is coming up with more malicious sites and blocking them
3) Generally processing is slower

Any comments welcome

Can't fault (StrongVPN) though and especially their support

[Pleng]

Downloads being faster is peculiar.

Processing will be slower. All traffic is bouncing between its source, the UK, and destination (your computer). I have a private VPN and a ping (an essentially empty packet of data), takes between 0.5 and 0.7 seconds to receive a response. One can deduce from that that there's a 0.25 to 0.35 overhead in both direction.

This won't be noticeable in large downloads, as there's generally only one request being made. But downloading an average web page tends to involve a lot of requests to the server for lots of different information; each one of those requests will be subject to latency.

[Korkenzieher]

That is basically true, but a VPN stream will often also be encrypted and compressed. With latency coming from a number of sources, including content checkers located in Thailand, it is entirely possible that some data will come through quicker because of the smaller number of packets needed to deliver the (compressed) content. Generally this won't be the case with (video) streaming though, which will already be in a compressed image format.

Your content is also likely to be coming in on a non-scanned port, which will also have the effect of reducing the initial latency.

[MrPlum]

Three observations since going 'StrongVPN'

1) Movie and music downloads (Vuse) seem to be faster
2) Avast is coming up with more malicious sites and blocking them
3) Generally processing is slower

Any comments welcome

Their privacy policy makes it clear you can be identified. http://www.strongvpn.com/policy.shtml They also share your browsing and shopping habits with other companies. Being a U.S. company they will also roll over quickly when it comes to providing intelligence agencies with your info.

It may be secure but it doesn't sound very private.