Using Open VPN on Wireless Access Point while traveling abroad

[Juano11]

Gentlemen,

I have been unsuccessful for many days in finding an answer to the following question. I apologize if this is basic knowledge and/or posted elsewhere. If it is, I've been unable to find it.

My family & I travel out of the U.S. a few times a year, I'd like to be able to access our U.S. based online services (i.e. Netflix, etc...) while we are gone.

I have a VPN service that supports Open VPN and has U.S. based servers (AirVPN).

During our last trip I was able to use my VPN client on my laptop and an HDMI cabe to watch Netflix on the TV.

However, I also have a WD TV Live box and an extra router (ASUS RT-N16) that should support both dd-wrt & open VPN. I have dd-wrt installed, but I am having a hard time getting my head around how we can use this router while out of the country to access the VPN. I'd like to be able to have a "VPN" wireless network available to connect the WD box and other devices as needed.

We typically rent houses and the router is physically accessible to me, but I probably couldn't or shouldn't try to access its administration settings.

I have a router and three dedicated wireless access points in my house at home (same SSIDs, security, etc...). Once I set these up they have been basically transparent.

What I was hoping for was a wireless access point, with it's own SSID, that I could plug into the existing router when we travel that would provide a second wireless signal that would connect to my US VPN. It is not uncommon for these houses to have a modem/router combo, so I can't just replace their router with mine.

I have already installed dd-wrt. I know how to set up an Access Point. I have instructions from my VPN provider Re: installing on a router. But, I don't know how to set up a WAP to direct traffic through a VPN.

Is this even possible without being able to access the main router's admin page?

Many Thanks

John

 

[sinshiva]

heh, nope. sorry. what you want is technically possible, of course, but would likely take a fair amount of work/experimentation to achieve

 

[CaptainSTX]

You should be able to accomplish this with no problems.

First setup the OpenVPN to run on the router that you want to use as an AP. I would suggest that you plug it directly your modem and use it as your only router while getting the VPN working. If you can't get OpenVPN working then go with PPTP as all your really trying to do is avoid geo blocking and the security of your data transmission is of secondary importance.

Once the VPN is working to your satisfaction all you have to do is:

1. Since you will be connecting to a hotels DHCP server and you don't know what range they will be using leave your WAN IP to DHCP.

2. Set your LAN IP to something uncommon and hopefully not used by the hotel such as 192.168.199.1.

3. Enable the DHCP server on the router that you want use as an AP in the same range as the LAN IP. (192.168.199.100 - 120 would work for this example.)

4. Run an Ethernet cable from the hotel's router or the Ethernet cable in the room to the WAN port of the router being used as an AP. (It might be possible to get this to work using the AP as a WiFI bridge, but I'm not sure and I haven't experimented with DD-WRT recently. Even if you did get it to work the throughput probably would be so slow that streaming would be ugly.)

5. Connect to the SSID of the AP and all your Internet traffice should be routed through your VPN.

No port forwarding should be necessary or any other changes on the primary router. If it won't work then the hotel has done something to block you. I have never had a problem, but they dislike streaming video so PPTP may not be enough to hide what you doing. I just got back from a stay in a Chicago hotel where I had to use OpenVPN to stream my SlingBox.

You can test your setup before traveling by just installing your travel adapted VPN router behind your primary home router.

 

[sinshiva]

this is why having additional pairs of eyes is useful haha.

i was under the impression you wanted a client vpn router running off a guest AP while the same device is broadcasting a regular AP, and that you wanted to not configure it via the web interface.

using an entire router for routing over the vpn would work well, as CaptSTX described.

sorry about that.

 

[Juano11]

Thanks

Thank you guys for your attention to my question.

CaptainSTX, those are exactly the directions that I was searching for.

I have setup multiple routers to act as access points and have taught friends how to do the same.

My sticking point when trying to get my head around this was changing the second router's IP, keeping DHCP enabled, and connecting through the WAN (not the LAN) port on the second router. That is completely the opposite to setting up an access point.

Correct me if I'm wrong. But, I see now, that what I really want to do is to have two routers sharing the same internet connection. By changing the second router's IP address so dramatically, it's highly unlikely that I'll have a conflict.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but this sounds like it is exactly what I was looking for.

Again, Many Thanks

John

 

[belden_jeff]

been reading this thread, I find it very useful. Thanks for sharing your expertise!

 

[Juano11]

Just to follow up,

In case anyone was wondering, CaptainSTX's directions worked perfectly.

 

[snipdisc]

Glad to hear that it's working well. I found this tip very useful so I will save this information for future use. Thank you very much!