Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2016 9:15 Post subject: can I access my home network remotely with ddwrt?
Hello there,
Please forgive me in advance as I'm very new to all of this terminology and apologise if I sound naive when explaining my question.
What I would like to do is purchase a router from yourselves and to use the router for a couple of things. I want to be able to use an external hard drive via USB for some Network Attached Storage within my local network. I also wish to set up an OpenVPN server so that I can secure my home browsing.
That seems ok for me to grasp so far as I understand I could configure the router with VPN provider credentials like cyber ghost etc. The would mean I didn't need to role my own server which is helpful as I'm a newbie to this tech.
However, the third thing I wish to do (and seems to be the hardest to work out) is to be able to access the HDD attached to the router (NAS) when I'm away from my local network. Can I do this? If so, how would I go about it? I've been reading about installing OpenVPN on the router and using Tunnelblick as the client etc. For me this seems a bit in depth at the moment. Could I load the router with Cyberghost VPN server settings and access my local network this way?
You will be able to do all these things with DD-WRT.
@1) You will need to have USB port on the router you buy. No all have it. Then it is pretty easy, you will find info about it here (with other helpful tips):
http://tips.desipro.de/
@2) There are 2 modes of VPN. Your router can be client or server.
- client: you connect to some VPN provider and your traffic is routed through his server, masking your real origin. It is useful for some stuff, but generally, I do not consider it being much safer for most cases. This provider has then access to all your browsing history and under certain jurisdictions, he has to give that to the authorities when asked. So depending on what you are trying to hide, it might not be that useful. Really depends on your usecase. And you must trust VPN provider with your data, security etc., which I certainly do not.
- server: Your router acts as a VPN server and you can connect with your clients (phone, laptop) from outside of your network. This will hide all traffic between your client and your network in encrypted tunnel. Also, your laptop will have access to everything on your local network the same way as if you were connected home. This is a nice security boosting feature, especially regarding your third point.
@3) There are multiple ways to do this, but best option is running VPN server on your router as I wrote above. Once you get that going, you are pretty much done. There are other ways to do this, but one should think about security. You probably do not want anyone to be able to access your stuff.
Easier than having VPN is for example running SSH tunnel (I do that personally), but I would not recommend having open SSH port on your router, I have separate NAS Linux machine, with login throttling and other security measures, I do not allow SSH connection to my router from outside.
For all these solutions, you pretty much need public IP address. It does not necessary have to be static, but it has to be public. There are ways arout that problem as well, but that is more advanced stuff and usually requires additional server with public IP at your disposal. _________________ Netgear R7000 running BS DD-WRT build 26446 (home)
Thank you so very much for the reply! All the information you've given me has been great!
I think I will purchase a DD-WRT router and use OpenVPN server on the router to secure my home network and to access my network when I'm away from home.
My next question would be how do i set up my DD-WRT router as an OpenVPN sever?? I've had a look at the OpenVPN website and lots of other tutorials and it seems that I can only download the bits I need if I have a windows/linux machine.
The problem is all I use is Mac/iPhone and iPad. Therefore I'm unsure how to get the OpenVPN server on my DD-WRT router with just the MacBook Air I'm using. Could you shed some light on this?
You do not need to install anything on router, VPN server is already there. I can not help you with setting that up though, you have to find it yourself. Note - you need to search for how to set it on DD-WRT, not the regular Linux machine setup which most of the guides will provide.
You do need OpenVPN client SW for your Apple products, but I can not help you with that either, I am not Apple customer. But I am sure, there is something, OpenVPN is used by Apple customers. This will be easy to google. _________________ Netgear R7000 running BS DD-WRT build 26446 (home)
So if I've got this straight I just need to find the OpenVPN server/client configuration for Mac and iOS and place the server script into the DD-WRT router and the client script for my Mac and iOS device.
I'm guessing the best thing for Mac/iOS would be Tunnelblick? I've been trying to google how to do this but haven't seen something that will give me a step by step unless it's for Windows/Linux. I will keep looking though
