If you are leaving in US or UK and you travel abroad you may face some problems when trying to access some sites you usually do from your home. There are a lot of sites that are accessible only to US/UK users. As US/UK citizen you may not be aware of this, but when you travel abroad you realize that you simply are not able access sites like Hulu, Pandora, Veoh, Spotify, BBC iPlayer, etc.
The solution: bypass the restrictions from your current location. You may do this by:
- Using a hide ip tool that changes your IP address to a United States or United Kingdom IP.
- Subscribing to a VPN service that provides access to a US/UK server
- Connecting to your home computer via VPN and access the Internet as you were home. Elegant, safe and cheap solution as you don’t have to pay anything. So let’s see how this can be done.
How To Build Your Own VPN Network
So you want to create a VPN network of your own? Well, here are a few facts and guidelines to help you out either way.
First, the basics. VPN or Virtual Private Network is a network that is constructed by using public wires to connect nodes. This type of network provides a secure and remote access into another enterprise network. If you make a VPN connection of your own, this enterprise network would be yours. The ownership of the network will be public, but since security wise, private considerations are prioritized, this type of network provides a safe and secure connection. You will be able to access your own computer from anywhere on the internet like as if you were on your own network.
You can create your own Virtual Private Network using a number of systems and software, some of which will be discussed here. One of the most popularly used methods is via Hamachi (aka LogMeIn) setup. I will show how to setup Hamachi on your home computer and then how to access it from a remote location.
How To Setup Hamachi/LogMeIn On Your Home Computer
Here are the steps you need to perfom:
- Go to https://secure.logmein.com/US/products/free/
- Click on Download button (Download PC version or Download Mac version)
- Create a user account. You need to provide an email address and a password.
- Activate your account from your email. A link is sent to you by email. Just click on it and your account is activated.
- Login to your account.
- Click on Add this computer
- Download and install LogMeIn. Click on Install LogMeIn button.
- You may get a security warning. Just click Run.
- The process of the installation on this software started. Press Next and accept the terms. Next, choose the typical installation.
- Choose a description for your home computer
- In order to be able to access the computer anytime make sure the following options is checked. (It may not be shown for you!)
- Choose the installation folder. You can keep it on C:\Program Files\LogMeIn. Click Next.
- LogMeIn service will be then installed. You may experience some flickering and black screens. Don’t worry! It’s normal.
- After the setup is finished, you are done!
How To Access Your Home Computer From Remote Location
One the installation done, you login back to the LogMeIn website, you will see your computer with the description.
When you need to access your home computer from a remote location you need to login to your LogMeIn account and click on Remote Control below your computer description.
You will be redirected to a page where you will be required to click ‘Install ActiveX Control…’ from the dropdown. Then click ‘Install’ when the security warning pops up.
Voila! Your new VPN is ready! 
In the browser you will be required to enter your Windows username and password (the credentials you are using to login to your home computer).
Then, you will be able to control your home computer. In order to access restricted sites like Hulu or BBC iPlayer you just need to open a browser and get started as you were home.
What do you think about this method of accessing restricted content? Is it effective? Have you used it?
11 Comments
Hi,
Nice and useful article. Thanks.
Best regards !
Astrill Is A Fast And Affordable VPN
A virtual private network offers several advantages over the normal Internet connection. It increased privacy and data safety by making use of encryption. The VPN provider basically works as a proxy for all Internet traffic. The websites and services that are accessed send the data to the VPN without knowing where the data is really send to. The same is true for the ISP of the Internet user who also does not know the real destinations nor the kind of data that gets transferred.
Astrill is a new virtual private network provider. Servers provided by Astrill are located in the United States and the United Kingdom and it is up to the user to decide which to use. This can be important from a performance perspective but also to access contents that make use of country locks to only allow specific countries access to the contents.
The biggest benefit of Astrill over comparable vpn providers is that the service does not require any connection configuration. Most vpn providers ask the user to create a new vpn connection. Astrill comes with a software that will handle all the connection settings. All the user needs to do to login is to provide the login credentials that have been selected during setup of the account.
Starting Astrill afterwards will display a small program window with Off and On buttons, a country selector and links to settings and help.
The same window displays the download and upload speed of the service. The homepage of Astrill displays additional interesting information in a server stats menu including the current network utilization.
More important than those raw figures is if performance demanding applications run fine when using Astrill. A problem of many vpn providers, especially the free ones, is that they do not provide the infrastructure to make activities such as video and audio streaming enjoyable. Astrill manages to provide the speeds needed to watch videos at sites like Hulu or Youtube HD videos without buffering issues.
Astrill works without lags with many popular services such as Hulu or Pandora.
The software is currently offered as a version for the Windows operating system. A Mac, Linux and mobile version is following shortly according to the developers.
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https://www.astrill.com/
Remote control definitely works and can work well, but the downside is that it tends to be a lot slower and less efficient for watching or streaming video/audio, or if one has high resolution or multiple displays.
What would be nice is to use one’s home computer as a secure, single-user (typically, let’s say), completely transparent proxy server–but does Hamachi let one do that? At full speed, even in the free product? And transparent to http, https, e-mail, Skype, etc. etc.?
I wish there were a great one-click/newbie-friendly, reliable, and ideally free solution to this problem without the practical speed and reliability limits free servers commonly have.
I think that many users, even very experienced and fairly savvy ones, have troubles setting up VPN networks. For most people the easiest solution will be to go with third party remote access software. This way the risk for leaving security holes open is minimized and, in my view, more options are made available.
Can I do free surfing via gprs with LogMein himachi?
dear all
i ve an imortant question
‘s should be to creat vpn betwen two co or client on one domien enternet provied or it’s not nessary plz i need a answer
Hmm..good article on using Log Me In..which is a great tool for accessing and manipulating a remote computer. But it is definitely NOT useful as a VPN service..very very slow, fine for remote troubleshooting or moving files but unuseable for Hulu or any sites that block out-of-country use. Also, I didn’t learn anything in the article about Hamachi at all. I have tried several 3rd party VPNs..the fastest and easiest by far is Astrill. If you actually need a VPN give it a try. I think the article is misleading and does not explain how slow and cumbersome it is to use remote management software to try to access Hulu, Movie site, Pandora and the rest..
Is there any way to use this software in conjuction with the samsung galaxy s VPN option that already exist on the device?
@Philip – Samsung Galaxy with Android includes support for the following VPN protocols: PPTP, L2TP, L2TP/IPSec PSK VPN, L2TP/IPsec CRT VPN.
Regarding LogMeIn, yes, it can be used on Samsung Galaxy tag. Take a look here.
So if I set up a VPN on my computer can I host game servers on it? Or is this not the same thing?
@Steve – It’s not the same thing. A VPN would not allow you to host games on your computer.