[LINK] Hola

[Martin Barry]

$quoted_author = "Jan Whitaker" ;
> 
> Me either, but from what I read on the http://hola.org/ website, it
> appeared to be peer to peer. Can some other linker wiser than I am on
> these things please advise?

In order to get around the geo-blocking your connection to the service needs
to come from, or appear to come from, an IP the service provider believes is
in the correct region.

There are two standard ways to achieve this:

- Connection via VPN with the exit point sitting in a valid IP for the
  service.  You're device might be given a valid IP on the tunnel or there
  may just be NAT performed at the exit point. 

- Use a proxy that will forward the request with a valid IP as the source
  address.

Both these require a "server" to work. Some proxies and VPN services have
been blocked by service providers because they were the source of too much
traffic, an usual pattern of traffic, the IP range is in a data centre
rather than a traditional ISP or something else made them stand out.

Hola's P2P network might have been a way around this (only those with a
valid IP get the content directly from the service provider, everyone else
gets it via P2P) but the implication is that it can avoid geo-blocking
without P2P so it sounds like a selective use of a proxy which may be
vulnerable to being cut off.

cheers
Marty