Back to StrongVPN for my proxy server needs
Well, I’m coming back to StrongVPN. Actually, I never left it. But in May I started experiencing problems connecting to Hulu and Netflix from Japan. It was the “anonymous proxy server” errors many people were getting. I tried their new client at that time and it didn’t help. And then they started talking about an extra paid service to get around the problem, which didn’t seem right to me.
I have to admit I was frustrated in May. Yet… I liked the StrongVPN people. Their support has always been good, and the people friendly. So I did not request a cancellation and refund. Instead I just requested not to auto-renew on September 15th and I would “wait and see.”
In the meantime, I’ve been using unblock-us, which works a different way, by using their special DNS servers and streaming from their servers.
Now it’s the beginning of September, and my past good experience with StrongVPN was tugging at the back of my mind, and so I decided to try StrongVPN again. Their 24 hour tech support immediately helped. They gave me a link to their new client for my Mac, I tried it, and everything worked perfectly. I even tried speedtest.net and was getting really fast speeds. Faster than back in May.
At the same time I’ve started noticing some odd things about unblock-us. For example, some sites which should not be affected, such as NY Times, Forbes and Apple Forums, were not working well at all. They suddenly started getting very slow, with broken images, etc. I turned off unblock-us and everything started immediately working quickly and normally again.
So I am “returning home” to StrongVPN. What can I say? Until the problems in May, I had been using StrongVPN for several years and had frequently recommended them to my friends. And while they definitely had a rough spot in May, the problems seem to be fixed now and things are running better than ever. So I’m happy to be back. I’m also happy to be able to turn it on when I need to and disconnect when I need to and not fiddle any more with my DNS servers. Oh, and they are a bit less expensive than unblock-us as well.
I use Private Internet Access, but really just for the security aspect when I’m not on my home network. I’ve read that PIA is also on the Hulu blacklist, and I presume that Hulu puts considerable effort into scoping out the IPs of proxy servers. I know they have their business reasons but it all seems pretty silly.
Gotta watch “Manhattan.” 🙂
My strongvpn is not working recently with Hulu. I get the same issue with different servers. Support is not being helpful just advised me to try other server.
I’m not having any trouble with Hulu. I’m using the L2TP protocol and connecting via San Francisco. Maybe you can try that. Good luck!