netflix-proxy

Docker packaged smart DNS proxy to watch Netflix, Hulu[n2], HBO Now and others out of region using BIND and sniproxy[n1].

Supported Services

The following are supported out of the box, however adding additional services is trivial and is done by editing zones.override and sniproxy.conf files:

Netflix
Hulu
HBO Now
Amazon Instant Video (US)
Crackle
Pandora
Vudu

Instructions

The following paragraphs show how to get this solution up and running with a few different Cloud providers I've tried so far.

DigitalOcean

The following is based on a standard Ubuntu Docker image provided by DigitalOcean, but should in theory work on any Linux distribution with Docker pre-installed.

Head over to Digital Ocean to get $10 USD credit to create a Docker VM
Create a Droplet using Docker 1.x on Ubuntu 14.04 (find in under Applications images).
Make sure you create the Droplet in the right location, for example if you want to watch US content, create in the US.
SSH to your Droplet and run the following command..
cd /opt && git clone https://github.com/ab77/netflix-proxy.git && cd netflix-proxy && ./build.sh
Point your DNS at the Droplet IP and watch Netflix, Hulu and HBO Now out of region.
Enjoy!

Security

The build script automatically configures the system with DNS recursion turned on. This has security implications, since it potentially opens your DNS server to a DNS amplification attack, a kind of a DDoS attack. This should not be a concern however, as long as the iptables firewall rules configured automatically by the build script for you remain in place. However if you ever decide to turn the firewall off, please be aware of this.

If you want to turn DNS recursion off, please be aware that you will need a mechanism to selectively send DNS requests for domains your DNS server knows about (i.e. netflix.com) to your VPS and send all of the other DNS traffic to your local ISP's DNS server. Something like Dnsmasq can be used for this and some Internet routers even have it built in. In order to switch DNS recursion off, you will need to build your system using the following command:

cd /opt && git clone https://github.com/ab77/netflix-proxy.git && cd netflix-proxy && ./build.sh -r 0 -b 1

Other Cloud Providers

Linode

The following is based on a standard Ubuntu image provided by Linode, but should work on any Linux distribution without Docker installed.

Head over to Linode and sign-up for an account.
Create a new Linode and deploy an Ubuntu 14-04 LTS image into it.
Make sure you create the Linode in the right location, as there a few to pick from.
SSH to your Linode and run the following command..
curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh && cd /opt && git clone https://github.com/ab77/netflix-proxy.git && cd netflix-proxy && ./build.sh
Point your DNS at the Linode IP and watch Netflix, Hulu and/or HBO Now out of region.
Binge. Not that there is anything wrong with that..

DreamCompute by DreamHost

The following is based on a standard Ubuntu image provided by DreamHost, but should work on any Linux distribution without Docker installed and running under non-root user.

Head over to DreamHost and sign-up for an account.
Find the DreamCompute or Public Cloud Computing section and launch an Ubuntu 14-04-Trusty instance.
Make sure to add an additional firewall rule to allow DNS: Ingress IPv4 UDP 53 0.0.0.0/0 (CIDR)
Also add a Floating IP to your instance, otherwise it will only have an IPv6 IP.
SSH to your instance and run the following command..
curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh && sudo usermod -aG docker dhc-user && cd /opt && sudo git clone https://github.com/ab77/netflix-proxy.git && cd netflix-proxy && ./build.sh
Point your DNS at the instance IP and watch Netflix, Hulu and/or HBO Now out of region.
Well done, enjoy!

-- ab1

[n1] https://github.com/dlundquist/sniproxy by Dustin Lundquist dustin@null-ptr.net

[n2] At the time of writing (May 2015), Hulu appears to be geo-restricted from DigitalOcean and Linode US IPs, but working from DreamCompute IAD DC IPs (at least the ones I've tried).

wimvds / netflix-proxy