How does Tunlr work?

Posted by gravyface on Super User See other posts from Super User or by gravyface
Published on 2012-08-14T01:54:18Z Indexed on 2012/10/01 9:40 UTC
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For those of you not in the US, Tunlr uses DNS witchcraft to allow you to access US-only (and UK-only stuff like BBC radio online) services and Websites like Hulu.com, etc. without using traditional methods like a VPN or Web proxy.

From their FAQ:

Tunlr does not provide a virtual private network (VPN). Tunlr is a DNS (domain name system) unblocking service. We’re using sophisticated technologies (a.k.a. the Tunlr Secret Sauce ©) to re-adress certain data envelopes, tricking the receiver into thinking the envelope originated from within the U.S. For these data envelopes, Tunlr is transparently creating a network tunnel from your location to our U.S.-based servers. Any data that’s not directly related to the video or music content providers which Tunlr supports is not only left untouched, it’s also not even routed through Tunlr. In order to use Tunlr, you will have to change the DNS address. See Get started for more information.

I can't really wrap my head around how this works; I have always assumed that these services performed a geolocation lookup via your client IP.

Just really curious as to how this works.

EDIT 2

I believe they're only proxying the initial geo check and then modifying the data stream request to include your real IP address so that the streaming is direct, not proxied.

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