Hacking DNS on Wii to unlock US Netflix in Canada while keeping Soft Mod?

makoonai

Honorable
Mar 19, 2013
1
0
10,510
Hey all,

I'm in Canada and looking to hack my Wii so that I may be able to have a US version of Netflix. This is done by:

1. Make sure your Wii is connected to the Internet.
2. Select Wii Options.
3. Select Wii Settings.
4. Now click the right arrow once to view the Internet option > Click Internet
5. Select Connection Settings.
6. Now select the connection profile you are currently using.
7. Select Change settings
8. Select Auto-Obtain DNS settings i.e. click the right arrow three times until you see Auto-Obtain DNS settings.
9. Click No, then Advanced Settings.
10. Now click on Primary DNS and Secondary DNS fields and type in your ISP DNS server IP addresses.
11. Select confirm > Click on Save and Finally click on OK to start the connection test.
12. Next perform a Wii system update.
13. And you are done!

My Problem: The hack requires that I perform a system update, but my Wii is soft modded (homebrew, gecko, etc). Updating the firmware on the Wii while I have a softmod can turn my Wii into a BRICK or it could just end up removing my softmod.

Question: How can I perform the DNS hack while keeping my soft mod, and not turning my Wii into a useless piece of plastic?

Somewhat specific question, and I'm not sure if this is the right category...

Thanks all!
 

Vynavill

Honorable
Nov 30, 2013
31
0
10,590
Uhm....that's not exactly a hack, but rather a workaround...and also, how can it work in the first place?

Instead of using an automatically assigned DNS (which is usually going to be your ISP's DNS), you're going to manually set it. What a DNS does, however, is simply translate, from numeric to literal or viceversa, the name of a website into an IP address for your accessing device; it will simply do that and nothing more.
With such a trick, the best thing you can do is simply avoid a website's obfuscation made from your ISP (e.g. you want to see Netflix US, but your ISP obfuscates any Netflix locale except the Canadian one and blocks you from viewing them).

There is a solution, which has both barely working free options and awesomely working paid options, but I don't and can't know if your soft mod is strictly homebrew-usage related or if it's used for playing illegally obtained games (which doesn't get you any help here on Tom's HW), so I'll have to reserve that.