Netgear router VPN

VPN
1

I’m moving house and I’ve set up internet access with a new provider on which I can use a Netgear Nighthawk router that’s been sitting in a box while I used the prior ISP’s box.

While adjusting some settings on the Nighthawk, it appears the router has the ability to work as a VPN using OpenVPN. Is this effectively the same as setting up a PiVPN? Are there advantages to PiVPN over the router’s VPN, or vice-versa?

2

Functionally, they’re identical. The main win for PIVPN is that it handles all of the ugly certificate setup for you. That said, if you want to be able to VPN into your home, the bit of pain to setup OpenVPN on the firewall is probably worth it. I’m not a fan of unauthenticated traffic coming into my network and want my VPN auth as far outside as possible.

3

I went from using the built-in VPN on a Netgear ORBI MIMO router to pi-vpn. Here are a couple of advantages:

  • I setup PiVPN with Wireguard, which is way faster than OpenVPN (which the Netgear router uses and is an option with PiVPN)
  • Adding new clients is super easy. Just ssh into the raspberry pi and run pivpn -a and pivpn -qr and scan the resulting QR code on the WireGuard iOS app
  • It’s similarly easy on non mobile clients as well. I just have to scp the config to my desktop/laptop and add it in the Wireguard app.
  • Easy backups and updates with pivpn -bk and pivpn -wg.
  • The Wireguard iOS app has this really nice feature where you can set it up to automatically activate the VPN whenever the phone is on a cellular network without WiFi. This gives you an automatic always-on VPN to my home. It’s so easy that my non-technical girlfriend loves it. Having to remember to turn on the OpenVPN tunnel from the app was a pain before that.
4

When you say “VPN into [my] home” do you mean access files or devices on my home network? If so, that’s not a consideration. I’m primarily interested in the safe-browsing-on-the-road aspects of a VPN (i.e., using a VPN on unsecured wi-fi at airports, coffee shops, etc.), and I would like to take advantage of my home Pi-Hole while on the road. Does that change your recommendation?

5

Where is your home Pihole? If it is in your network at your home, then it is a “home device” and my recommendation stands. That said, what sort of pipe do you have at your home? You might find yourself very limited as frequently upload speeds out of your home are very poor.

6

The other comment is right. You wouldn’t get any of the privacy type benefits because you’d be using the ISP of your home network. You would get the benefits of being hidden from a coffee shops network though. I use my pivpn to get access to my files at home (I also have nextcloud) and to keep myself more safe when using WiFi on travels. It’s an added bonus that I get to use my pihole on my home network