Hotspot Shield was the Virtual Private Network software that everyone was talking about. Mainly because it offered free access to their network – with limited bandwidth usage. Always VPN could be a viable alternative to watch Hulu or listen to Pandora from outside the United States.

The Virtual Private Network is easy to setup and can be downloaded as a client for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X or Linux. Once the software has been installed the connection to the VPN can be established from the Start Menu in Windows.

Users get the choice between compatible and faster editions, and can also change the configuration if they want to tweak it further. Tests with Hulu and Pandora were successful. A lot of buffering was going on though which could have been a temporary problem or caused by the increasing popularity of the service.

There is one more “thing” that has to be mentioned. The Virtual Private Network is displaying advertisement on top of each web page to finance the service.

Always VPN can be a viable alternative to Hotspot Shield, especially if the latter service is not working for you or if you already used up all of your bandwidth and want to continue watching or listening to those services.

Update: Always VPN is no longer a free service. The service provider is now charging users for bandwidth usage.

While three Gigabytes is a lot of bytes when surfing the Internet it’s not enough if you regularly watch movies or hear radio which have much higher bandwidth demands than normal websites. Hotspot Shield does not require user accounts which means that they must have different means to track user bandwidth. Two possibilities are the IP address of the user and / or the MAC address of his network adapter.

Raymond already conducted some research on his own and he discovered that the Mac address is being used by Hotspot Shield to keep track of the bandwidth usage. The only thing left to do would be to change the MAC address to another one which would basically mean that the counter would be reset to 0 again and that the user could use another 3 Gigabytes with Hotspot Shield.

The easiest way to do that is a software called Mac MakeUP. Just install the software, select your network card, click on the Generate Random button, select completely random mac and click on the Change button. Et voila the MAC address has been changed. Reconnect to Hotspot Shield and you should be able to connect normally and use the service as usual.

The selection of tv shows is actually pretty good. You get to see Animations like The Simpsons and Family Guy, Crime & Mystery like Bones or Team Knight Rider but also pretty old – but still cool tv shows – like Simon & Simon or Emergency Room. Should be something for everyone, great if you do not know what to do for a certain amount of time.

Users from outside the United States, for example US citizens traveling to Europe or another location, can use the free application Hotspot Shield to view Hulu content even if they are abroad. Check out my article on accessing Hulu – and other services – using Hotspot Shield.