Advice for VPN & live sports

[Barto]

I signed up to a trial with ExpressVPN in the hope of being able to watch live sports from a provider in Canada. The problem is the connection is too slow for it to work. I don’t know much about VPNs, does anyone have any suggestions?

The potential hack is that DAZN Canada covers English Premier League and Champions league for CAD 20 per month. Even better, if you have a DAZN Switzerland account for CHF 12.95 per month, if you are in Canada you are entitld to watch DAZN Canada content with your swiss subscription. I am trying the latter option, the streams started playing but dropped due to the slow connection

Without Express VPN connected, Fast.com gives my download speed at 48Mbps. With ExpressVPN the connection to a Canada based server is 8 Mbps and to USA 10 Mbps; Swiss server 31Mbps. These readings at 10am on Wednesday, it was slower last night. ExpressVPN says the solution is to change to a closer server but then the hack doesn’t work. Should the speed drop so much ?

[San_Francisco]

@Barto

Even better, if you have a DAZN Switzerland account for CHF 12.95 per month, if you are in Canada you are entitld to watch DAZN Canada content with your swiss subscription

Don’t they have a “fair use” policy limiting that roaming to a certain period of time?

@Patron

Another way would be to run your own small OpenVPN server on a VPS

OpenVPN really isn’t the best (among the popular) VPN choices. It’s relatively difficult to set up and slow in comparison to IPsec, Wireguard or PPTP, which are probably easier to set up as well.

@Barto

I don’t know much about VPNs, does anyone have any suggestions?

For your use case (watching streams) you don’t need encryption at all. A plain, unencrypted “tunnel” to your Canadian IP will suffice and be preferably due to no encryption overhead negatively affecting performance.

Maybe also a proxy server or even a “Smart DNS” service. There are ones that explicitly advertise your use case - and should be fastest and easiest to set up.

[nabalzbhf]

@San_Francisco

IPsec, Wireguard or PPTP, which are probably easier to set up as well.

Tailscale is mindblowingly simple.

[ChickenFat]

I was using Tunnelbear. Cheap and easy to use

[Barto]

Thanks to all for the alternatives. After spending hours on this yesterday without sucess the ExpressVPN option is now working today. I guess will persevere a while longer to give it a chance

@Patron

Another problem is that many content providers start blocking IP ranges of the big VPN providers

I found reviews saying ExpressVPN are fast getting connections back up, which was why I chose them. I guess I will learn how true this is

@San_Francisco

Don’t they [DAZN Switzerland] have a “fair use” policy limiting that roaming to a certain period of time?

I didn’t find one - but will wait and see and in the meantime I also have a 1 month free trial