I work from home and my job uses a vpn, but I want my own vpn on my router for the rest of the house

I got a VPN to use for all my devices. Normally I’d just use the vpn’s app, but I obviously can’t do that for my game console. So I was thinking I can put the VPN on my router/modem directly, so everything goes through the VPN no matter what.

I also work from home though, and they have us sign into their own vpn on the work computer. I don’t want my VPN on the router/modem to interfere with the work VPN. I checked with my job (and naturally the IT service desk was confused by my request) and they said theres probably a way to have work computer/vpn pass through mine entirely.

How would I go about this? Not the biggest brain when it comes to VPNs/networking

If it was my network, I’d look into a managed switch, segregate network. Work stuff/ home stuff. Than rout one network via work VPN and set up separate VPN for the rest. Maybe a VPN on rapberry for home .

You just need a router that you can set up to only route certain devices’ traffic through the vpn it is running. So not all traffic goes through it. Many do. That way your work computer can use it’s own direct point to point vpn. I use a firewalla gold for this purpose but there are many others that can do this.

Looks like you got some good answers. Your router just needs to be able to send certain devices through the VPN and punt others to the wild internet directly.

I feel I should warn you that your gaming experience may not be optimal with a VPN in the middle. A lot of modern games like low latency and some VPNs can cause enough delay and jitter to be a problem. I wish you luck. Come back and let us know what you did so someone else can learn from it.

Realistically it wouldn’t matter. You’d basically have your work vpn tunneling through your secondary full network vpn. Just note that your throughput might be trash…

Why do you feel the need to put your entire house on a VPN?

I do this. Asus router with Merlin firmware and yazfi installed. Yazfi lets you put guest wireless networks on a VPN. So you can have a guest network just for your work computer without a VPN to keep it separate, and another guest network with the VPN on for your other stuff.

I just feel like using a vpn. But I can’t think of any other way for my console to be on the vpn outside of putting it on the router itself. I know I can run the app on my laptop and wire my console through the laptop, but then it has to go over Wi-Fi which defeats the purpose of me having it wired.

That’s something to look into. Any sources on how it work/how to set up?

You can always have multiple network ports in your laptop…

Merlin:

Yazfi:

First install Merlin firmware and enable ssh access. Login to the router via ssh and install yazfi with the installation command from the website above. After it’s installed, you’ll get an extra tab on the guest network page to configure which guest networks you want to go through the VPN.

If you want absolutely everything going through the VPN, you don’t need yazfi or Merlin. Any router that can connect as a VPN client will do.

…Like just slap an adapter on there?

USB or USB-C to ethernet adapters are a thing…

Didn’t cross my mind. Kinda sucks to have more cords and crap, but I suppose it’s the easiest option