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Guest pelmetman

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Guest pelmetman
Frankkia - 2012-01-15 7:24 PM

 

You could also take a look at www.expatshield.com - this is for receiving UK based web sites. And for US sites www.hotspotshield.com Both are free!

 

Thanks for the link Bernie :D..........The bit I don't understand is they give me a UK IP address.......but surely I have that already? :-S..........

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Your IP address will be allocated by whatever ISP you are connecting through, and, unless you have made arrangements for a static IP address (unlikely) it will be prone to change every time you physically connect your router/modem.

 

At home it will be (presumably) a UK ISP, which means you will be allocated an IP address which can be identified as belonging to a UK ISP, and therefore that you are physically located in the UK.

 

When you are abroad, you will be using an IP address allocated to the access point you are using, which will be via an ISP in that country, and you will not be identified as being physically located in the UK.

 

Hence, content suppliers who limit their delivery to the UK (as do the BBC currently for iPlayer) will not allow you to stream their content.

 

Logging in via a "proxy server" located in the UK, can be a way of getting round this. It is itself identifiable as being UK located, and it sits between you and the content provider, and forwards requests and responses on your behalf. The content provider never sees you, it simply sees the UK based proxy server.

 

Proxies can be used for various reasons (to hide your IP address providing anonymous access, to cache content and make it quicker to deliver to an end user, etc).

 

There are many free "proxy server" providers, but not all will provide access to media streaming (largely because this ties down significantly more resources than simply relaying standard content to "anonymise "it). Hence, some that do will charge for it.

 

If you sign up for one, it is worthwhile doing a web check, since you will be passing significant content via them, and their business model may mean you have to accept the delivery of adverts, etc.

 

I certainly wouldn't do "secure" business via a proxy (since they could theoretically trawl your details), and on some sites, the adverts can be less than savoury.

 

If, however, you want to access iPlayer, etc when abroad, then selection of a reasonably reviewed proxy should be OK.

 

IP addresses are funny things; Once upon a time, if you generically Googled for "Royal Mail" it would find a link for their site. If you then changed the search to "Pages from the UK", the link would disappear from the results. This was because (at the time, the situation has now been changed) the website was not hosted in the UK, the IP address was country (non-UK) specific, and the IP address is what Google uses to categorise UK pages!

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Added to that. You can be identified as being out of the country when you are sitting in your own living room if your service provider uses proxy servers.

 

AOL is a prime example of this - If their UK based servers are busy you can be routed just about anywhere in the world. Try getting BBC I player to believe you are in the UK when your ISP is showing your address as in the US.

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Although we don't bother, as we can get most UK TV via satellite dish, and we watch Spanish TV a lot anyway, as I understand it, there's quite a big market here in Spain for Brits to sign up to such deals, to get an "ISP Mask" server ISP address in the UK........in order to get around the UK-only broadcasting rules and copyright of the UK TV companies.

 

They all look decidedly dodgy and fly-by-night to me - at least the ones that advertise over here anyway.

 

They seem to be the latest generation of the "get your Corrie and other UK soaps and footie abroad" brigade; there have been very many cases in Spain previously of companies offering UK TV on the Costas via microwave re-broadcasting from their big dish on some tall hotel roof....totally illegally, and such companies are regularly busted and closed down, but others pop up in their stead.

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