vpn help

I hope that someone here has experience in trying to do what i am trying to do.

SORRY FOR THE LONG READING. NO TL;DR

I use my unraid to store media, i use dockers and plugins to get media.

Recently i think my isp was being monitoring my connection because at random time, usually during heavy downloading my internet gets reset.

According to tech support my connection has never dropped(whatever)

So i decided to try one of the many vpn services around and i found one that i liked.

My pre-vpn setup was simple I had a dsl modem and asus rt n66u router and life was great.

the asus had a built in vpn client (no this router is not dd-wrt) and a built in open vpn server  (which works pretty good).

So i signed up and got my ovpn files loaded them and boom i was connected to the vpn, soon i realize (kids watching Prime and begin screaming that streaming stop) internet had seized to work. Disconnected from vpn and internet begin to work after a router reboot.

Tried several more times and same outcome, reached out to vpn provider and i got bad news.

My dsl service uses PPPoE to connect and unfortunately you cannot use the same router to connect to PPPoE and then fire off the vpn.

Their suggesting was to add a second router to connect to my isp then use the asus to connect to vpn.

It does work however it will work for a few hours then i lose internet DNS, I show connected to vpn but cannot surf. However if i connect to the router that is doing the PPPoE to isp i can surf all day long.

I search and found flashrouters and found they sell a model that can do a PPPoE connection and a vpn connection at the same time but at $169 i have to really think about it.

Sooooo does anyone have this kind of setup and if so how are you making it work?

Any help or suggestions are welcomed.

I bought the same asus router specifically for horsepower for vpn and other things. I flashed it to shibby's tomato usb however and I don't use ppoe.  I would not buy a flashrouter when you could just flash ddwrt which is what they use or tomato on the router you have. Then follow some of the tutorials for ppoe and vpn. Sorry not much help but I think you can do it for free with what you have.

What about using one of the OpenVPN plugins or dockers to just use the VPN on your Unraid machine.  The only downside I can see is that you would lose the ability to watch Plex content remotely (Would still work via your LAN)

Sooooo does anyone have this kind of setup and if so how are you making it work?

 

Any help or suggestions are welcomed.

Before you buy a new router you may want to give pfSense a try. Basically it's a free OS that you load on a computer and it acts as a router but much more powerful. I was using a 12+ year old dell tower with a Pentium 4 CPU and 1 GB of ram and it was able to process my VPN traffic significantly better than my E3000 router. I will warn you that pfSense gives you way more options than you are used to seeing. It is pretty overwhelming if you have never used it. That said, there are plenty of setup guides and the forums are helpful. Also, the computer you use will need at least 2 Ethernet ports (1 for WAN and 1 for LAN). You can buy add-on Ethernet PCI-e (or PCI if its an older computer) cards but I would recommend you spend extra and get an Intel card. They work best.

What about using one of the OpenVPN plugins or dockers to just use the VPN on your Unraid machine.  The only downside I can see is that you would lose the ability to watch Plex content remotely (Would still work via your LAN)

I have overcome the Plex issue with pfSense. I have a rule that bi-passes the VPN and sends Plex traffic through my ISP. All other traffic gets sent through the VPN.

Not to digress from the original subject matter, but I'm keen on getting PFSense up and running as a VM on my Unraid box.  I'd quite like to use it as a VPN gateway and keep my current router modem combo as is.  Is that possible?

Thanks guys for all the suggestions I hadn't check back and just got a notice from tapatalk.

Yes I was considering a pfSense box because I really wanted this set up and lucky for me I have 3 or 4 3com 100m nic cards. The gold standards of network in My opinion.

My internet keep dying so I made a call to the isp and it turned out my modem was dying. They replaced it with new one and move me from a old cats ( I might have the terminology wrong) line to a new vdsl line. This new modem does the PPPoE for me so my router is set to dhcp. 

I went ahead and dd wrt my router and man I had forgotten the power of the dd wrt

The open Vpn docker is not what I wanted

I will try one of the guides to setup Vpn on the router and if that fails I will pursue the pfSense route. 

Not to digress from the original subject matter, but I'm keen on getting PFSense up and running as a VM on my Unraid box.  I'd quite like to use it as a VPN gateway and keep my current router modem combo as is.  Is that possible?

Yes, I currently am running a pfSense VM and then run an ethernet cable to my E3000 and have that act as the wifi. The VM is not running "perfectly" yet, I am planning on post more on this once I have done other tests but that will probably be a few weeks.

I went ahead and dd wrt my router and man I had forgotten the power of the dd wrt

 

The open Vpn docker is not what I wanted

 

I will try one of the guides to setup Vpn on the router and if that fails I will pursue the pfSense route. 

The reason I went to pfSense was that my E3000 router was not powerful enough to give me my full download speed when using a VPN. The E3000 would only give me around 7 Mbps download speed when using the VPN and I get 4x that speed. I then moved to pfSense so that I could get my full download speed when sending data through the VPN. I would guess that you will run into the same limitations, unless you own a very high end router (commercial grade) or your download speed is lower than the threshold.

Not to digress from the original subject matter, but I'm keen on getting PFSense up and running as a VM on my Unraid box.  I'd quite like to use it as a VPN gateway and keep my current router modem combo as is.  Is that possible?

Yes, I currently am running a pfSense VM and then run an ethernet cable to my E3000 and have that act as the wifi. The VM is not running "perfectly" yet, I am planning on post more on this once I have done other tests but that will probably be a few weeks.

 

I went ahead and dd wrt my router and man I had forgotten the power of the dd wrt

 

The open Vpn docker is not what I wanted

 

I will try one of the guides to setup Vpn on the router and if that fails I will pursue the pfSense route. 

The reason I went to pfSense was that my E3000 router was not powerful enough to give me my full download speed when using a VPN. The E3000 would only give me around 7 Mbps download speed when using the VPN and I get 4x that speed. I then moved to pfSense so that I could get my full download speed when sending data through the VPN. I would guess that you will run into the same limitations, unless you own a very high end router (commercial grade) or your download speed is lower than the threshold.

I'll look forward to that write up.  Got a dual Intel NIC waiting to go in my server, but a few more pressing issues at the moment to sort out.

Not to digress from the original subject matter, but I'm keen on getting PFSense up and running as a VM on my Unraid box.  I'd quite like to use it as a VPN gateway and keep my current router modem combo as is.  Is that possible?

Yes, I currently am running a pfSense VM and then run an ethernet cable to my E3000 and have that act as the wifi. The VM is not running "perfectly" yet, I am planning on post more on this once I have done other tests but that will probably be a few weeks.

 

I went ahead and dd wrt my router and man I had forgotten the power of the dd wrt

 

The open Vpn docker is not what I wanted

 

I will try one of the guides to setup Vpn on the router and if that fails I will pursue the pfSense route. 

The reason I went to pfSense was that my E3000 router was not powerful enough to give me my full download speed when using a VPN. The E3000 would only give me around 7 Mbps download speed when using the VPN and I get 4x that speed. I then moved to pfSense so that I could get my full download speed when sending data through the VPN. I would guess that you will run into the same limitations, unless you own a very high end router (commercial grade) or your download speed is lower than the threshold.

Yes I am also looking into how much bandwidth I'm going to lose since I really did not get a good test because my internet was going and down.

So to be clear since you are running your pfSense you get full on speed and a vpn?

That is correct, I run all my traffic through a VPN and with pfSense it can handle full speed. My old dell pentium 4 could handle 80 Mbps with the VPN turned on! But how that CPU fan screamed at me!

Not to digress from the original subject matter, but I'm keen on getting PFSense up and running as a VM on my Unraid box.  I'd quite like to use it as a VPN gateway and keep my current router modem combo as is.  Is that possible?

Yes, I currently am running a pfSense VM and then run an ethernet cable to my E3000 and have that act as the wifi. The VM is not running "perfectly" yet, I am planning on post more on this once I have done other tests but that will probably be a few weeks.

 

I went ahead and dd wrt my router and man I had forgotten the power of the dd wrt

 

The open Vpn docker is not what I wanted

 

I will try one of the guides to setup Vpn on the router and if that fails I will pursue the pfSense route. 

The reason I went to pfSense was that my E3000 router was not powerful enough to give me my full download speed when using a VPN. The E3000 would only give me around 7 Mbps download speed when using the VPN and I get 4x that speed. I then moved to pfSense so that I could get my full download speed when sending data through the VPN. I would guess that you will run into the same limitations, unless you own a very high end router (commercial grade) or your download speed is lower than the threshold.

Yes I am also looking into how much bandwidth I'm going to lose since I really did not get a good test because my internet was going and down.

 

So to be clear since you are running your pfSense you get full on speed and a vpn?

I don't run all traffic through vpn but from reading other's results it'll cut your throughput in half with the asus rt-66u.  However there is an asus ac56u with a dual core 800Mhz processor.

Yes I am watching eBay lol

Unfortunately for me my isp is a local co-op so it I can get 10 mbps down I'll be happy because that is what I'm paying for. 

Step up my pfSense Box and it humming along nicely I haven't tuned it to use vpn for all devices.

However I was reading that a new fork has developed because some guys did not like the commercial side of pfSense.

New fork is called OPNsense, I've downloaded the image and trying it out.

I just wonder if anyone else was trying this out?

First time hearing about it. What does OPNsense offer that pfSense does not? I haven't been able to find a comparison of the two softwares (although I haven't looked very hard). I did find this post which is interesting: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1445899

First time hearing about it. What does OPNsense offer that pfSense does not? I haven't been able to find a comparison of the two softwares (although I haven't looked very hard). I did find this post which is interesting: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1445899

I've downloaded it and installed on a vm, it pretty similar to pfsense. From what i read is that they fork because pfsense was jade by being commercial and they wanted to keep it clean and more based on providing a full firewall solution than trying to make a buck.

However if you need help from them it will cost you 300 euro or close to 500USD for a 2 hour block. I've seen one appliance that has their software and it cost about 600USD for something like the entry level of a netgate appliance.

Also another person has started another one called smallwall (not to be confused with smooth wall) and he is basing his after M0n0wall

Since ive keep an eye on them they have release at lest three update to their firewall.  So it like Beta testing, i for one will stick to pfSense and even buy the Gold subscription.