I end up doing tech support for my extended family by virtue of being the most tech savvy. What small easy setup router/device can u add to my parents house/extended family members homes so that I can log into their network and troubleshoot items. I’m thinking a small VPN server device that also allows me to use their network to test if “the internet is working” or if a they have trouble accessing a website. Any suggestions? Preferably something I could order, have mailed to my home, configure, and then send to them to just plug into their network. Thanks
Raspberry Pi or similar. But you’d need a bit of technical expertise on your side. I have a similar situation, but I usually just end up installing a firewall appliance that I manage, and can monitor in detail.
A Raspberry Pi 4 running DietPI with Tailscale.
I have my family member run a shell script on one of their Macs that opens up an SSH tunnel between their screen sharing port and port on one of my Linodes. Then I connect over VNC. Disadvantages are that they have to be there and they have to double click an icon, but that’s pretty much it, so the cost is effectively zero since I’m paying for the Linode for a bunch of stuff anyway.
The SSH command is
RemoteForward *:linode-port localhost:5900
where linode-port is the port number you would connect to using VNC. I chose “not 5900” so that while we happen to be connected nobody will port scan and think my Linode is running a VNC server.
Do their remote routers support VPN servers? If so, use their existing router and setup VPN server and you are good. If their routers are old with no such capability, you could get Asus routers for them such as Asus AX86U and configure VPN servers on these routers, which work great.
Get an Asus router that is supported by the Merlin firmware https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/
The OpenVPN setup is very easy and you can always ask questions on the forum https://www.snbforums.com/forums/asuswrt-merlin.42/