Has anyone attempted to access and stream something like Netflix over zerotier?
I am thinking of a couple of issues…
a. is the throughput viable and good enough…
b. does it bypass the issues of standard VPN streaming… (geofencing etc.)
If I am away from home and want to stream netflix over my laptop, but have to appear as if I am coming from home is the typical scenario.
Thus far the only viable candidate worth pursuing that I am aware of thus far is
a. unencrypted L2TP running over wireguard. ( allows one to monkey with MLPPP ) *****
b. ??? (maybe zerotier?)
*** A genius I know informed me that one of MLPPPs features, is that it provides a way to deliver large payload packets using small transport ones by splitting them at application level instead of using fragmentation of the transport ones at IP level. ( Also helps maintain MTU at 1500 )
Other discussion point. Ease of use.
a. requires MT devices at both ends.
b. may only require MT at one end.
I can’t speak for zero tier but I do this quite successfully via standard Wireguard VPN and policy based routing (routing/rules) after creating the requisite table and address list/firewall rules. Works on my laptop in a traditional client to server setup as well as over specific home network devices via a site to site. 7000 miles away from the US but you’d never know. Except the latency of course which doesn’t matter for streaming.
I see, so basically maybe its third party VPN providers that dont work (regardless of vpn type) but home to home,
or road to home wireguard works fine ???
Yes third party providers and data centers (alas I used to use linode for this) all have know IP blocks and so the streaming providers just blacklisted them. It was (maybe is) a game of wackamole trying to use a server that hadn’t been blocked yet. For a home connection you are just that, a regular home connection versus a commercial entity. I’ve been streaming this way since 2013 or so when they first started blocking things.
Works great for me but I’ve also got a data center to send it to and my own IPv4 / IPv6 space. It’s also going over a gig symmetric pipe in both locations.
I use an RB5009 as a ZeroTier gw at home and a CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS in the data center so i can typically get several hundred meg between the two.
Latency is about 40ms on average between the two locations.
I’ll trade your 40 ms latency for my mid 2xx ms latency. The big hop across the great waters hurts AND my internet is serviced with an LTaP LTE6 using the local cell provider. Get 100+ Mbps down / 50 Mbps up. Service works well enough but the latency sucks. I’m rocking at CCR2004 PC version at the remote end and an RB5009 on the local end. Actual two of them in VRRP config.
I have the same hardware. Can you tell me what kind of speeds you get across the connection (from lan to lan, not reaching out to the internet)? Have you set up other tunnel types to compare? IPSEC, Wireguard?
IPANET, so you can confirm that lets say I am on the road ( be it iphone or laptop ) can connect via zerotier to my home and go out the home internet?
The advantage of both zerotier and wireguard is that one only needs one MT at the home end!
The advantage of zerotier alone is that one never needs a publicly accessible WANIP correct?
The disadvantage of zerotier (for some) is reliance upon a third party.
(Edit: dont laugh at my number 3, if zerotier was owned by a chinese company, would your ISPs, be so happy )
Typically 400 to 500 Mbps. Until ZeroTier is updated for multi-core in MikroTik’s implementation, you won’t see much beyond 700 to 800 Mbps which is what I got when I tested locally between the two 2216s we have in the lab.
I don’t use wireguard / ipsec as much anymore becuase most of the clients I work with care more about ease of use / tunnel management than pure speed, so ZeroTier is heavily favored in ISPs/DCs/Enterprises.
Yup, my public IPv4 and IPv6 flip to the datacenter when I use ZeroTier either with a router at home or with the ZT client on the road.
You have check the “default route override” box on the ZT net. And you also need to create a default route in the ZeroTier contoller on the ZT net you’re using.
Re Netflix/Hulu/DisneyXXX, video is streamed via TCP/HTTP. So imagine ZT be roughly same as any other VPN – it’s just not that much traffic even at 4K.
Re IPTV… that’s a pretty broad term. Let’s assume you mean some cable/fiber provider that bundles “cable TV” with the ISP service. That’s typically done using multicast IP to delivery video (e.g. the “TV channels”). For this case, it’s here were ZT could be useful since you can bridge the LAN, including IPTV multicast, via ZeroTier – so you can bring your “cable TV package” anywhere using ZT. (I haven’t tired it, but should work)
But one generic advantage of ZeroTier (that I think gets ignored) is that the MTU is higher – so standard ethernet packets never get fragmented – that can in some case have real performance benefits. In your “streaming” cases, this would help more with UDP+RTP-based MPEG streams, since you can squeeze more frames-per-packet with higher MTU – but RTP isn’t common in consumer streaming AFAIK.
Works great, especially when I’m traveling and want to watch streaming services that are geo-locked. ZeroTier is also extremely easy to install, configure and use on all types of operating systems and devices. Full HD requires about 3,5/6 Mbps and 4K 15/32 Mbps (H.265/H.264). https://www.synopi.com/bandwidth-required-for-hd-fhd-4k-video
Just create a network the using the web based ZeroTier admin center (my.zerotier.com) and use the network-id when installing all the clients. Then enable which clients that are allowed to connect to the network using the web manager. That’s it.
One caveat, zerotier is only on arm devices right… wireguard is on all devices… wait for it… tis coming… its here!!
another reason why zero trust cloudflare tunnel should be an options package available to ALL DEVICES…
