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I've been using a service by unblock-us.com, which provides a proxy to Canadians/others allowing access to services that are locked down to only US ip addresses.

This is easy enough to achieve by setting up a reverse proxy (eg: squid) on a US-hosted server, and then configuring your browser or OS to use that proxy.

However, there is something that unblock-us does that I'm not sure how to duplicate. Rather than configuring your OS to use them as a proxy, you can simply change the DNS Server settings on your router to point to their addresses. Any requests to services they support are automatically proxied. The advantage to this is that you don't have to set up every computer in your house, and it "just works" with clients like ps3, xbox, android, etc. Disadvantage is you really don't have control over what gets proxied, as well as there are privacy concerns I suppose.

How can I achieve this same functionality on my own us-based slice?

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    get a low budget vps outside the us. be sure that it has unlimited bandwith. connect by vpn. enjoy!
    – mate64
    Nov 17, 2011 at 23:12
  • A VPN would work from tunneling traffic from PC or perhaps an Android device. But I'm more concerned with all of the devices in my house. My Wii, PS3, phone, wife's work computer, and any other device that either cannot or I will not configure for VPN connectivity.
    – rcourtna
    Nov 18, 2011 at 1:54
  • you can use your vps as a proxy and connect to it by vpn. that's the most secure way. your router should be able, to establish permanent vpn-connections. if not than you can be sure that you've antiquated hardware. unblock-us uses their own root name servers btw. that's the trick.
    – mate64
    Nov 18, 2011 at 7:58

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Out of curiosity, when you run an nslookup against their DNS servers, what IP address is returned? As in, if you look up google.com and yahoo.com do they return different IP addresses or the same one?

If they return the same IP address, I imagine what's happening is that DNS will ALWAYS return the proxy server as the IP address for all requests. Requests then flow to the proxy relatively transparently, and then the proxy does the redirect.

In terms of recreating it... I'm not experienced enough in reverse proxying (or proxying period), but I imagine you'd configure your DNS server to return itself as the IP address for any request. Then get the proxy to work from there against incoming requests.

What I DON'T know in that model is how you'd handle authentication.

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  • You couldn't do authentication - pretty sure if you 404'd that you'll get a great "alternative result page" that helps fund the site. Proxy == authentication. DNS == find out everything you're looking up.
    – databyte
    Nov 17, 2011 at 23:19
  • @Driftpeasant nslookup on Netflix, Hulu, and other sites supported by unblock-us return IP addresses in the same address space. nslookup on yahoo and google return Yahoo and Google IPs. So my traffic is only proxied by them if it's a supported service - that's good to know. I'm actually quite happy with their service (rarely a hiccup or bandwidth problem), was mostly curious to know if there was some project out there that aims to provide the same functionality.
    – rcourtna
    Nov 18, 2011 at 2:18
  • That would seem to be easier/make more sense. I'm still not sure how authentication works. That being said, it would be relatively simple to roll your own version of the software through a VPS. Might be an interesting Open Source project.
    – Driftpeasant
    Nov 18, 2011 at 3:24

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