As I wrote articles on this blog, I end up thinking that we’ve covered a lot of topics. One of the most interesting articles (at least from the stats) is related to overcoming geolocation-limited services. Most of the time, the advice that we make is for you to use a VPN service (check HideMyAss, ibVPN, ExpressVPN, PureVPN or NordVPN for great VPN services). But as we went through the specifications of those solutions, we found out another solution that OverPlay is implementing as of now: they call it SmartDNS. Learn about Overplay SmartDNS.
SmartDNS does not encrypt your connection
Unlike standard VPN services that change your IP as well as encrypt your connection, SmartDNS does not encrypt your connection. This is a big difference and we thought you want to have a better understanding of how it works.
Don’t get us wrong: while a VPN solution actually enables you to overcome geolocation–limited services like Hulu, BBC iPlayer and so on and so forth, some people may not want the additional features and software that such solution wants you to install.
In fact, in order to use a VPN service, most of the times, you would have to install a VPN client. This VPN client would then manage all the encryption and address mapping. Depending on the platform you use, a different client may need to be installed. So, there is different client whether you use Windows, Mac or Linux. The same applies to smartphones and other mobile devices.
No need to install additional software
On the other hand, with the SmartDNS solution that OverPlay is proposing, there’s no need to install additional software on your computer/mobile device. In fact, the trick is to redirect your entire internet DNS request to OverPlay’s DNS servers. Depending on the country where you want to land, you would then have a different IP Address to be used as a DNS server.
The trick here is then to use OverPlay’s DNS servers instead of the ones that your ISP is automatically giving you. As a reference, a DNS, which stands for Domain Naming System, is an internet service that translates a Fully Qualified Domain Name (aka FDQN) similar to www.google.com to an actual IP address in the form of 209.85.143.104 (if we’re dealing with IPv4). This IP address is unique throughout the internet and is associated with a computer/server.
OverPlay SmartDNS is faster
By using OverPlay’s SmartDNS services instead of your ISP’s DNS servers, you redirect all your internet request to OverPlay’s servers; those servers will then manage to do the trick for allowing you to pretend that your IP is located in some other countries, thereby allowing to overcome some geolocation limitations.
This service from OverPlay, while still in testing mode, can be interesting for those who don’t want to install additional software on their computer. Moreover, I expect that it can be interesting to use this solution rather than the full VPN service on low-performance computer/mobile phone since it only redirects internet requests into another DNS instead of consuming more computing power by running a VPN encryption for each and every requests.
This SmartDNS feature isn’t a separate service though, it comes bundled with any OverPlay subscription that you take.
What’s your view on this? Do you think this is sufficient enough for you as a service if your goal is to overcome geolocation-limitations?
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