I'm doing some testing for a site a client, where they've blocked certain parts for licensing reasons from being seen in certain states/countries. One of them happens to be my state. To connect while keeping the block on, I've tried various VPNs. Somehow, the site is still detecting my location and blocking those areas of the site. What gives?
With your VPN disconnected, start terminal and type in traceroute and the website name you're trying to get to. Next, connect your VPN and do the same thing. If your route to the site hasn't changed, then your VPN connection isn't working properly... you'll need to contact the VPN hosters to fix that issue. If the route is truly different with the VPN connected, then the site you're tying to his has excluded that VPN location as well for whatever licensing block they've put in place. A ton of places do exclude the networks of known VPN providers just for such reason... i.e. you're not the first to think of using a VPN to get around the geo-location block.
Perhaps the IP address your VPN is using is also on the block list? Do you have the option to change the server that the VPN uses? I see it is currently using a server in Europe based on the address.
Doesn't matter. Unless you can show without a doubt that the route you're taking to that site is truly different with the VPN up, you're not proving anything. You need to make sure your VPN route is truly working and doing a traceroute to see that it is, is the only to prove that.
What I'm saying is that your VPN can be up and connected, but your packets you're seing and receiving aren't going across that new connection. I've seen this happen before, regardless of the fact that it shouldn't happen.
I have the same problem with my iPad (brand new) running iOS 6.1.
With the VPN turned on, web sites and apps can still know that I am not within my organization's location. In fact, they can detect the country in which I am traveling.
VPN is on and operating. If I ssh to the Linux machine in my office, the DNS name shows that I am coming in from a host on our VPN. And Location Services show that neither Safari or the apps in question have access to location data.
In spite of that, the web sites and apps still know where I am.
If I connect to our VPN from my Windows 7 laptop using Cisco AnyConnect, the same web sites do not know where I am.
As a small test, turn off location services on your iPad, but VPN tunneling is handled a bit differently on iOS devices and some apps can use that as a default gateway as opposed to the VPN one, but some cannot. If you use Safari and go to www.myipaddress.com on the iPad when it's VPN'd in, do you see an IP address in the VPN range or one of your WIFI/Cellular connection on the device?
Then that's your problem. No, unless your VPN software has a way to instruct ALL traffic to go through it, then it's probably an issue with iOS or most likely an issue with the VPN software. I will say this. Generally, there are settings within VPN software to either use it's connection for all traffic or for just traffic that requires access to the network it's bridging for you. If the VPN client is set to just traffic for the networks it's bridging, then that's why not all apps are using that as a gateway. If you change that, then ALL network traffic while on VPN will go through that. Just an FYI, Mac and I'm sure iOS by default only use the VPN gateways for traffic destined for that network, they don't use the VPN gateway as the default gateway for all connections. This can easily be changed in the VPN settings on a Mac, but unless you have that setting in your VPN client software, the default behavior is to probably not pass all traffic through the VPN gateway.
Anyone know if there is an iPad/iPhone ap that allows the VPN to be configured? The VPN is built into the IOS functionality and I don't see any kind of settings that would allow me to control routing.
My guess is that you must have the VPN configured incorrectly.
Except it says connected... Even shows sending and receiving data.
I'm sorry but I don't have a lot of knowledge concerning VPN usage. Maybe someone else in the community here can help more than I can. Sorry.
Swank, I know that's not it. Because certain partsof the site are blocked for different areas. It's not blocking all content, just for content within my state.
No I'm saying it's obviously not blocking due to vpn detection, it could very well be that it's not working though.
So it is going the exact same route. Why would that be?
And that's why I said you need to do a traceroute to see if your VPN is truly working. It's the only way to test to see if it is.
Trying to use VPN to get around state block, not working
