Can I use my Florida IP address from Canada?

[phillman]

I own a vacation property in Florida with a cable modem with WiFi (no router). I have no computer in this house except when I or one of my guests use the house and we access the internet via the WiFi connection on the modem.

I live in Canada and have a DSL connection with multiple computers and devices on my home network. Again no router…I use the ISP provided modem as my network hub with devices using either an Ethernet cable or WiFi to access the internet.

Is it possible to take all of the devices on my home network and use the IP address in Florida to access the internet? The primary purpose is to gain access to regionally restricted media content from Netflix or Hulu while I am in Canada. I suspect that the answer will have something to do with building a VPN and will require one or two routers being added to the mix. Is it possible to accomplish this without a computer to act as a VPN server in Florida? Is there another option that I should explore?

 

[bill001g]

You are correct in your assumptions on how to solve this. It depends what you call a "computer". If you have wifi in florida you actually do have a router since a true modem will only have a single IP connection which would not be very useful with wireless. Still that does not matter a lot.

When you really look at it a router is just a small computer in most cases running a stripped down unix OS. Because it is very hard to find a modem/router combo unit that has good vpn support you are going to have to add another device.

You can put a router or a small pc behind the current "modem" and load the VPN on there. Hard to say which option you should take. A PC is much more powerful since it has lots more memory and hard drives but it also uses more electricity. It will depends on your background. If you have no issues loading third party firmware to routers and configuring unix based vpn a router will be simpler. If you have limited knowledge things like hamachi vpn software for a PC are a little easier to get working. You might also be able to use simple proxy server software...though most that runs on unix

 

[Urumiko]

I'm not sure of the legalities where you are, but I'm under the impression you need an IP address in the region, you generally just need to be directed to the apropriate server. Most region based blocking works by changing which server you are directed to via DNS, so all you really need is to change your DNS server manually in most cases.

For your solution, you will basically need something VPN capable at either end, be it an entry level business class router, or something running a software client.

something like an entry level cisco at either end would be my preffered solution as it would allow the most robust and tunable decision making on what gets sent where, but you could possibly set something like a rasberry pi up at the remote end to function as a proxy, and use software at your end. That wouldnt cost much at all.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Tom's Hardware does not support bypassing security protocols; nor does it condone illegal activities. Attempting to bypass regional blocking is considered a violation of Tom's Hardware - Terms Of Use and will not be discussed in these forums. I'm fairly certain that if you read through the terms of use for each of these services, they will state that you are not supposed to violate region restrictions or something along those lines.

Wolfshadw
Moderator