OT: Need someone in Europe for NFL Gamepass signup

Submitted by karpodiem on

I ordered a VPN from Goldenfrog.com so I can watch NFL Gamepass (they block you if you have a US IP) - http://www.goldenfrog.com

 

Only problem is that I need a EU billing address. I'd pay the $ up front to cover the entire season.

*Edit - US billing addresses work!

karpodiem

August 13th, 2011 at 12:03 PM ^

you get what you pay for - I pay $20/month for Goldenfrog. It works on my iPhone/iPad;, when they release the NFL Gamepass apps, I will be able to use those as well.

I get 4Mbit downstream/ 1Mbit upstream from the VPN. You need at least 3.5Mbit downstream to take advantage of the HD stream you're paying for from the NFL. 

You aren't going to get those speeds for cheaper than $20/month (I did my homework on this)

karpodiem

August 13th, 2011 at 1:35 PM ^

not that simple. when you connect to the (live) streaming video, you will need to have an IP address outside North America, or the stream fails to start.

the proxy workaround for the signup process also doesn't circument the requirement of having an EU billing address on your credit card ;)

MGoJoe

August 13th, 2011 at 3:20 PM ^

Has anyone tried using the UMICH VPN to watch live US streaming events from Europe? I remember trying it once, but it didn't work for me (maybe I didn't set it up correctly).

CRex

August 13th, 2011 at 5:57 PM ^

Have you tried just getting a prepaid European Credit Card?  If they list some European bank address or the like as the billing address you'd be golden.  

skwasha

August 13th, 2011 at 7:06 PM ^

I realize this solution may not be ideal for less tech-savvy members...

But $20/mo for  VPN you'll use 6-10 hours a week seems ridiculous to me. So, I would instead propose using an Amazon EC2 micro instance in the Ireland availability zone and then just proxy (or VPN if necessary) through that. At $.025/hr + data transfer costs, you'd no doubt pay less than $20 for the entire season.

Also, I see no where in the terms that they require a non-US billing address. Am I missing it somewhere?

Edit: Even better... OpenVPN has an AMI available to make this even easier. See here. Since you get 2 client connections for free, you'd still only be paying for the EC2 instance and the data transfer.

skwasha

August 13th, 2011 at 11:46 PM ^

I'd suggest going thru this howto: http://openvpn.net/index.php/access-server/docs/admin-guides/499-openvpn-access-server-ami.html

It walks you thru setting up the server piece.

Client setup is pretty straightforward once you have the server set up. You connect to the server and can download the connect client from there.

If you prefer the PPTP route, there's a good walkthrough here: http://www.dikant.de/2010/10/08/setting-up-a-vpn-server-on-amazon-ec2/

Or if you really must have IPSEC then there's Openswan. But honestly, in my experience it can get tricky with EC2 (IP addresses, routing, etc.) whereas the other two tend to 'just work.'

karpodiem

August 14th, 2011 at 9:41 AM ^

just ordered NFL gamepass (signed up with US billing address, it worked. nice call)

here is the million dollar question though - I have a desktop with a 100mbit connection to the internet (does 12.5mb/s all day, both up and down) and two network cards sitting in the machine (I can plug in ethernet from the switch into each jack, no problem)

I'm going to need to connect to the VPN in order to tap into Gamepass...But would it be possible with Windows (has to be Mac/Windows, more below) to have two seperate IP addresses?The second network connection would be screengrabbing Gamepass using Adobe FMLE to create a Flash stream of what's on the screen. 

Adobe FMLE is only for OS X/Windows, so no Linux.

skwasha

August 14th, 2011 at 2:53 PM ^

You could... Multiple NICs on the same subnet *can* work. But it's not the best solution and can cause weirdness.

It'd be much simpler to tell your computer what traffic you didn't want going to the VPN.

Normally (no VPN) your computer's routing table (a directory of where to send what traffic) has an entry that says send everything to the main gateway (usually the router in your home.) Then your home router figures out where to send the traffic. When you connect to the VPN a new entry gets added to the table that takes precedence over the existing entry and says instead, 'send all traffic to me.' So, everything gets sent via the VPN tunnel and the VPN server now figures out where it needs to go.

However, the way routing works if there is a more specific route it will be used. So, all you need to do is tell your computer which traffic should use the router as its path instead of the VPN.

On a Mac adding a route would look something like this (PC is very similar):

MyMac:~ me$ sudo route add <IP address I don't want on VPN>/32 <IP address of my home router>

Now traffic to that IP will bypass the VPN.

buddhafrog

August 13th, 2011 at 11:05 PM ^

Yeah, so I spent 20 minutes and am not closer to understanding this.  Granted, I'm a little bit behind the tech curve and a couple decades too old.  

With that being said, anyone mind giving me a brief overview that might help me know how to investigate this further?

Right now, I'm streaming NCAA and NFL games every Sun/Mon morning.  These days streams are better and frequent enough that it's not too hard... though crackdowns have been increasing.  This has been my ritual for some years now.  I'm thinking a relatively cheap, reliable stream might be a wise choice.