Auto cloud VPN w/ NixOps?

Suppose I want to watch Netflix in Japan on my iPad.

I wonder how easy it would be to script a VPN solution that automatically spins up a VM at some cheap cloud provider in the country of choice, and what would be the most user friendly way to then connect to it?

For providers, AWS seems like an expensive option, but of course a few hours per month won’t break the bank.

What VPN software would I use?

As for connecting, I suppose some sort of client certificate pubkey could be provided to the VPN software, but I wonder if there’s some sort of one-click solution possible that doesn’t require generating anything nor typing IP addresses?

Basically idle musing though.

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It’s been some time since I checked last but when I looked into it I had read that many commercial blocks of IP addresses were blocked by Netflix in Japan making what you want to achieve rather difficult.

Depending what you’re looking to watch and where you live Netflix may already have a large selection of Japanese titles, or titles in your native language that have Japanese dubbing.

If you have experience contrary to this and don’t mind sharing some details I would appreciate it.

I’m not sure how relevant my answer was… but hope it helps :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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That’s the thing, if you run your own VM at some small provider you’re unlikely to be in those blocked ranges?

I thought of this because MKBHD was giving the example of wanting to watch Elf but it wasn’t in the US but it was in Japan, and he was promoting ExpressVPN. Which led to my idle musing.

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I understand the issue to be that both any place hosting your VM, or any VPN, in Japan, will likely have an IP address that is assigned to a block designated for commercial purposes… being flagged by Netflix as such.

It was a few years ago I looked into this, though. I only briefly tried and had mixed results (mostly bad). Things may have changed since then. And everything I’m saying was specific to Japan - not a clue about other countries.

Interesting… Makes you wonder how those VPN providers get around that. Maybe they rent apartments with 20 internet providers or run botnets :slight_smile:

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you can use something like wireguard, either Nat your connection or use a shadow socks proxy.

In fact sometimes even ssh port-forwarding can be really simple and effective, again, with a shadow socks proxy on the VPS end. You just need to do a nixos configuration with your public key embedded in it.

for more than just point to point VPN, try something like tinc … not sure if there is a nixos package for it yet…

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