How to stream the London 2012 Olympics

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How to stream the London 2012 Olympics

There have been several HOWTOs posted regarding streaming the 2012 Olympics using HTTP / SOCKS proxies via SSH and other similar methods. None of these actually work using the latest Flash on Mountain Lion (with Firefox, Chrome or Safari). Additionally, the third-party streaming sites don't provide BBC's amazing interface, which lets you quickly skip to individual competitors and events. However, setting up an OpenVPN server does work, with some tweaks. You'll get the exact same UX that people in England receive.

• Get a Linode VM in the UK. The 512MB server for $20 works just fine. (If you want to use my referral link, go for it: http://bit.ly/OuzdVe)

• Follow the standard OpenVPN installation documentation. (Basically, 'apt-get install openvpn' or 'yum install openvpn' and then follow these docs: http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/howto.html). For an OS X client, I prefer Viscosity: http://www.thesparklabs.com/viscosity/ .

• Push the following routes from your OpenVPN server. These are all the IPs the BBC uses for streaming recorded and live Olympics games. You can put this inside your OpenVPN server.conf file:

push "route 212.58.224.0 255.255.128.0"
push "route 68.142.94.242 255.255.255.255"
push "route 68.142.94.239 255.255.255.255"
push "route 69.22.163.44 255.255.255.255"
push "route 77.72.118.168 255.255.255.255"
push "route 66.235.128.0 255.255.224.0"
push "route 23.32.0.0 255.224.0.0"
push "route 141.101.126.37 255.255.255.255"
push "route 80.239.224.0 255.255.255.128"

• Put these entries in your /etc/hosts file:

80.239.224.43 a974.w23.akamai.net bbchdsodsecure-f.akamaihd.net
23.63.98.9 open.bbci.co.uk open-bbci.bbc.net.uk open.bbci.co.uk.edgesuite.net a1638.g2.akamai.net
23.63.99.226 ichef.bbci.co.uk
77.72.118.168 sa.bbc.co.uk
23.62.53.67 static.bbci.co.uk

• Connect to your new VPN and go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/live-video . All done!

I think there are more blocks to route, as some streams were working and others were not. I did have good luck with routing everything via:

push "redirect-gateway def1"

Thanks Dan - this worked perfectly for me. I switched the routes from the server to the client. I also added a couple more routes:

route 212.58.224.0 255.255.128.0 vpn_gateway
route 68.142.94.242 255.255.255.255 vpn_gateway
route 68.142.94.239 255.255.255.255 vpn_gateway
route 69.22.163.44 255.255.255.255 vpn_gateway
route 77.72.118.168 255.255.255.255 vpn_gateway
route 66.235.128.0 255.255.224.0 vpn_gateway
route 23.32.0.0 255.224.0.0 vpn_gateway
route 141.101.126.37 255.255.255.255 vpn_gateway
route 80.239.224.0 255.255.255.128 vpn_gateway

route 87.248.209.0 255.255.224.0 vpn_gateway # iplayer/live
route 178.79.195.0 255.255.224.0 vpn_gateway # iplayer/live

Thanks!
--Josh

For what it's worth, I've played with 3 setups today and I think the OpenVPN is overkill.

SOCKS proxy via ssh -D is very quick:

ssh -D 2001 user@server_host <- run this then set SOCKS proxy to localhost:2001

Alternatively, tinyproxy is quick and easy to setup and then requires only changing your web proxy setting.

The only way I could get the VPN to be reliable was to route ALL traffic, and that's not exactly ideal.

My 2 cents.

Personally, I like the OpenVPN route because tomorrow, when I'm at work trying to catch up on a couple Olympic events, I won't be in a browser/proxy hell which will interfere with my development. OpenVPN can be pretty confusing though and the ssh SOCKS proxy is much easier and quicker to get rolling. You could even throw the dynamic route option into ~/.ssh/config or (got all out and) create a persistant ssh daemon to keep the dynamic proxy alive 24/7 with something like:

ssh -o ServerKeepAliveInterval 5 -o ServerAliveCountMax 2 -D 2001 -i /PATH-TO-SSH-PRIVATE-KEY -TNCv username@linodebox

Again, that's probably overkill as well :)

unblock-us.com is a much better alternative, since it doesn't force all your traffic through a potential bottleneck.

Does adding a -carcfour to the ssh improve performance?