Can a VPN get around blocked software?

VPN
1

Have a friend whos a rotational worker, he lives at his worksite for 2 weeks at a time, works night shifts and usually games during his downtime, he just got back to work and the new management has blocked steam, netflix, youtube, basically everything on the internet you can imagine that someone living remote would do.

He is considering getting a VPN to see if he can get around the steam block they’ve put on his wifi, would this work or is it a waste of his money?

2

Wow having that blocked for two weeks at a time is really not cool. So yes a VPN would hide what he’s doing, but there are a couple of considerations: First, the VPN itself might be blocked and he might need to try a few different ones. Lots of them have trials, so this isn’t too bad. Second, if the management notices his high traffic they may try to cause trouble for him.

Ultimately it’s ridiculous that all the basic nice things are blocked at a job site where people live. So I support this 100%. But it comes with risks.

3

It really depends on what type of blocking they use, but here is what I would try if I were you.

  1. Try changing dns that Is not 8.8.8.8
  2. Try commercial VPN if you want, it may work but it may not
  3. If commercial VPN does not work, try setting up your own on wireguard with a VPS
  4. If step 3 does not work then try wireguard with port 443
  5. if step 4 does not work then try xray with protocol XTLS TCP REALITY 95 percent sure that one of those will work for you, DM me if you need any more information.
4

Yes, if it’s only blocked on the network side a VPN should fix that.

5

Yes it should work.
It could be however that the company also blocks some vpn services.
Also some services (netflix is one iirc) that don’t like you using vpns.
He could also setup a vpn server at hime (wireguard is a pretty nice one)
This way all his traffic will be routed through his home network then. Making it look like all his traffic comes from his home network. Thus not pissing off services like netflix

6

Yes, that might help. But most of the famous VPNs can be blocked themselves, consider trying something like whoer.net VPN or others that are not so big.

7

This is unfortunately more complicated, but you don’t have to pay for a subscription on a vpn. And software like wireguard runs pretty well on devices like a raspberry pi.
Which should have a lot of guides online on how to do it

8

With where he is, there used to be probably 170 people on the internet at a time, and he was still able to game then, so they have good internet just the new management wants work to be work kinda deal, he’s just wondering if the VPN will work for that at all, worst comes to worst they tell him not to do that and get mad at him

Besides that he does have a 1TB hard drive full of movies, but you can only watch the same movies so many times