OverPlay VPN on the Boxee Box

Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 5:26 pm

We’ve managed to get our hands on a Boxee’s first official hardware device, the creatively named ‘Boxee Box By D-Link’.

Obviously the first thing we did was take it apart, explore it’s workings and see what it’s really capable of.

Firstly, we’ll get the bad news out of the way. Currently OpenVPN is not going to be possible on this device. There is only a single reason – the device doesn’t come with a Kernel module for the TUN/TAP device, which OpenVPN requires. Eventually it’ll be possible to compile our own, but for the moment, forget it.

So, moving on! The device natively supports a different type of VPN connection, the somewhat long-in-the-tooth PPTP. This is generally a fairly fast, albeit insecure VPN protocol, but it’s main problem is that is exceptionally easy to be blocked, either accidentally by your local firewall, or slightly more maliciously by certain ISPs.

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