I’m planning to work from another country for a couple of months and would like to set up a site-to-site VPN between my home and the remote workplace.
At home, I have a 1Gbit Google Fiber connection, but typically experience download speeds of no more than 500mbit and upload speeds of around 300mbit during peak hours. The router at home will serve as the VPN server. IPSec or OpenVPN are not mandatory, but having them available for potential future needs would be nice. I just plan to use simple L2TP to connect the two sites, and on top of that, I’ll connect to my company’s VPN. DDNS is also required.
WiFi is optional, since I won’t be at home.
Considering these requirements, I’m looking for a stable and reliable VPN router priced under $250. I’ve looked into some TP-Link routers, but reviews on their VPN features are mixed, and they didn’t seem reliable to me. Any advice?
One thing to look at is perhaps building your own router using one of those mini PCs from AliExpress or getting a second-hand HP or Lenovo mini PC (plenty on eBay), and install pfSense or OPNSense on it. That way you have full control over everything, plus they have a lot more processing power than your average home router.
Use an AppleTV running Tailscale. Could also run it on a PC or Arduino board. It’s really easy to configure and maintain. Can connect from mobile or PC easily.
Thanks. I’ve also noticed people recommending these personalized routers in other threads, but I don’t have the time to do all the research to build such equipment. I simply want to buy something pre-made, tested, and reliable.
Dream Machine is an aesthetic and appealing box, but I think they don’t disclose the throughput values of its VPN features. After paying $300, which is already above my budget, I don’t want to discover that it only supports 30Mbit IPSec or 100Mbit L2TP when used as a VPN server.
I think this one doesn’t have a WAN port, and it must be connected behind the CPE, which is my ISP’s router. I am looking for something that will replace the ISP router.
You should be aware that any “pre-made” will also require a learning curve. Buying a used NUC + a usb ethernet adapter ( you need at least two ports) and loading OPNsense will only take you 15 minutes and setting up wireguard another 5, which by the way is stupid easy to learn and do, in less than half an hour you’ll have a rock solid reliable router that has regular updates and many additional features.
I’m actually looking for pretty generic and common features, but it seems like no one knows of a device already on the market. Instead, everyone keeps recommending those customized solutions.
Anyways
We experience frequent electricity outages in my area. Is it possible to set up that mini-PC so that it can boot up automatically after an outage? Again, the router has to be reliable because there will be no way to access that device physically if something goes wrong with its operating system or if it doesn’t boot up. Commercial routers are usually good at managing these types of failures, unless there is failure on its hardware.
The two things you have to do to deal with power outages, in BIOS/UEFI set the power option to “power up after failure”, also be sure to use a SSD for the system drive, of course having a UPS is always better.
Even hardware dedicated routers can get corrupted on power failure.