If you’re someone who likes to protect your privacy or stream content that is blocked in your own country, you’re probably well versed in the merits of both VPN and Smart DNS. As they work slightly differently, it is clear that for streaming services, Smart DNS is becoming the preferred choice at least for now. This has allowed services such as BestSmartDNS to flourish.
IMAGE: PEXELS
Streaming Services
Streaming services such as Netflix or the BBC have become very adept at geoblocking as they offer localized services. That is to say that if you try to access content in America and you’re in France, the geoblocking swings into place, ensuring you can’t access it. This is for various licensing reasons, and it ensures that say French content is offered to a French audience.
Overcoming Geoblocking
VPN and Smart DNS can overcome geoblocking allowing you to watch content no matter where you are in the world. This happens for a number of reasons. VPNs shield your IP address so streaming services cannot detect you’re not in the viewable region, while Smart DNS systems such as http://www.bestsmartdns.net/bbc-iplayer/ provide a local IP address allowing the content to be unlocked.
It is the two different methods of unlocking the content that is seeing many users adopt a Smart DNS system to watch content. When one is in place, you can watch Netflix in different regions to your own, and access BBC content from outside of the UK. The reason for this is that many streaming providers can detect a VPN and block it. At the time of writing, they cannot do this when an excellent Smart DNS is deployed.
Privacy
Of course, the reason you are using either a VPN or Smart DNS in many circumstances will determine which one you choose. If you are using it to stream content from a different region, you will probably be using a Smart DNS. You may well have tried a VPN already and found that the geoblocking is still able to do its job.
Privacy, on the other hand, to shield your identity while allowing almost full use of the web, your trusty VPN is still the best choice. Here, they create an encrypted tunnel that passes the data back and forth to your browser, keeping your identity secret and your data safe from hackers and snoopers.
The Smart DNS is not so effective in doing this. That said, as most Smart DNS services use existing encryption such as https, you do have some level of protection from hackers and snoopers, just not as much from a VPN.
VPN vs. Smart DNS
Smart DNS is getting smarter, and it is beginning to eclipse VPN services, especially if the role of the VPN is to watch region-locked content. That said, at least right now, nothing can beat a VPN from a privacy shield point of view. This is what they are designed to do, and the good service providers do it well.
In the future, we can expect to see developments in both technologies as one tries to rival the other.
If you are interested in even more technology-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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