Friday, March 4, 2011

Heading to Austria - How I am staying connected

I'm leaving tomorrow (3/5/2011) for Austria. I am scheduled to return in 3 weeks. While there, I want to ensure that I am able to access US content (ESPN, Netflix, ABC.com, etc.). I spent last night and this morning setting up my home PC in various ways to provide me with options to stay up to date while across the pond.

It just occurred to me this week that I am going to be in Austria for the majority of March Madness. The last time I was in Austria, I attempted to reach Netflix and ABC.com from my hotel room. I was saddened when each site informed me that I am unable to access their content while outside of the US. I can only assume, that the same restrictions exist for ESPN and CBS.com. These are two stations that I absolutely have to be able to access during March. I am still very optimistic that MSU is ready to make a deep deep run in the tournament. Unfortunately, because of a dismal basketball season, I am part of a minority with those beliefs. Regardless, I am now positioned to be able to watch every MSU game while across the pond.

All of the tools that I used are free. The majority of the instructions were obtained from LifeHacker.com. I set up an SSH proxy server using Cygwin, I created a VPN account with Hamachi that utilizes an HTTP proxy server (Privoxy), and finally, I set up a TeamViewer account. I also had to use DynDNS to get around Comcast changing my IP address.

TeamViewer is awesome! It allows me to connect and take over the desktop of my home PC.

Another advantage of having a Proxy server set up, is that I can now comfortably surf the web from any wifi hotspot without having to worry about anyone snooping my connection.

While I'm in Austria, I'll be able to keep in contact with my family via Skype, and with March Madness via a proxy server.