UK Residential VPN Services

The importance and value of having access to residential IP addresses is becoming a big issue for internet users.    So what is a residential IP address and why is it so important?   The reality is that you almost certainly already have one, if you connect via a modem/router through a standard ISP they will assign you a specific IP address to your connection.  This will be your public facing IP address that you use online, it’s entirely separate from any internal networking you do.   If you go to any check your IP address web site, the number you will see is the IP address that has been assigned by your ISP – here’s mine, heavily edited of course as I’ve just watched an episode of Mr Robot!

This was assigned to my modem automatically by my ISP British telecom, I have no control over other than the ability to ask for another one.   However this British Residential IP Address says a lot about me and actually controls a lot of my online experience – for example using this address, the following applies:

• I can watch BBC and BBC iPlayer without restriction
• All my search engines will default to the UK version
• I will be blocked if I try and watch HBO online
• I will only get the International version of RTE (Irish TV broadcaster)
• I will be restricted to the UK version of Netflix

That’s just a start but hopefully gives you the picture about how this specific address assigned by my ISP has so big an effect about what I can do online. Of course, lots of people don’t like this – they don’t want to be classified, redirected and filtered based on the (mostly) profit related decisions of the big online companies. I want to watch the BBC when I’m on holiday, I like watching Gaelic football and I know that the US version of Netflix is better than all the others combined!

The Future?  A VPN with Residential IP

There used to be a simple solution, you could just use something like a VPN/proxy service to hide your real IP address and display another one. There are a host of inexpensive services which allow you to connect via servers in different countries as needed, to use the BBC you’d use a UK service, for Hulu a US address one and so on. All that mattered was the geographical location of the server you were using, nothing else was important with regards to accessing web resources.

Although the blocks and geo restrictions were annoying it was relatively straight forward to bypass them.  What’s more most of the VPNs offered hundreds of servers in different countries which meant you could unlock content anywhere.  For example if you wanted to watch US TV shows or the BBC from Canada, then you could switch countries before connecting.

It’s just got more complicated and we can thank Netflix for this. For years all these companies have been trying to block and deter use of these anti-region locking services. Proxies pretty much died a death, you haven’t been able to use a simple proxy for Netflix for many years, however VPNs if set up properly are virtually invisible. They can be tracked down of course in a few ways such as manually subscribing to the service, monitoring for multiple connections on single addresses and other such methods. However although this information can be used to create blacklists to block access, it’s quite a dynamic situation as these addresses can be swapped out quickly and painlessly by the VPN services.

Netflix took another route and not only enforced traditional region locking, forcing you to connect to your local service, they also blocked any access from commercial based IP addresses. Unfortunately this includes nearly all the VPN services who use huge blocks of IP addresses which are all centered around commercial ranges. It didn’t matter how well their VPN was configured, which location they were from – if the IP address wasn’t a residential one then you’ll be blocked.

Most VPN Services Stopped Working with Netflix

It’s true, search around the web – literally hundreds of thousands of Netflix users who used VPNs, proxies or Smart DNS to connect to different versions of Netflix (usually the US one) were blocked overnight. The reason they all used almost exclusively IP addresses which were classified as commercial and are now completely useless for accessing Netflix servers. The worry is that seeing the success of this tactic then the other media companies will follow suit.

2023 – Residential VPN Update

There is hope however, as a a few months later this situation seemed to change.  It would have been expensive for VPNs solutions to integrate some US residential IP addresses and servers into their infrastructure.  If you’ve ever tried to buy residential IPs you’ll know how difficult it is as they are much more expensive than commercial addresses  and very difficult to obtain.

However it appears that the media companies have backtracked slightly probably because they blocked too many commercial customers. The reality is that many non-residential connections are made from companies, colleges and all sorts of other locations.   The best VPNs, the ones that make an effort to support bypassing geo-blocks to sites like Netflix and BBC iPlayer seem to be working ok.

Here’s a small list of solutions –

NordVPN is cheap and fast VPN that works with US Netflix (not most other regions though)

It’s an inexpensive option and one that works!

Update 2024 – Check out this alternative – Free 14 Day Trial Smart DNS

For a true Residential VPN, you’ll have to go a more specialized route – for a similar price you can get a residential UK VPN (or other country) or proxy from these guys –

Residential VPN Connections from IPBurger

You’ll pay per IP address though, so will have to select your country – it’s worth it if you don’t need a large selection though, quality over qauntity.