What's the cheapest/easiest device for adding remote access VPN to my home network?

VPN
1

There’s a few devices I’d like to access on my home network from work/elsewhere every now and then but I’m stuck with an ISP provided router that doesn’t look like it supports VPN. Is there an easy/cheap device I can add to the network to take care of this for me?

Also I seem to be having a hard time making a distinction with search engines between the “I want to access my network remotely” type VPN and the “I want to download movies and not get caught” type VPN. are there terms that will help me distinguish the two?

2

You can get a Raspberry Pi and install OpenVPN on it. Port forward it through your router so you can access it remotely, and you’re good.

3

Big fan of wirefusrd and OpenVPN here, but for accessing things on my home network I decided to go with zerotier. It’s a peer to peer VPN, Soni have it on my BlueIris PC to remote view cameras from our phones, and pcs and Chromebooks so I can access to/from them as needed. You could also set it up on a Pi or any of your home computers to gateway for devices on the network that can’t run zerotier.

4

sounds like you want an SSH Tunnel.

5

google remote desktop or setup a pivpn+pikvm

6

RaspberryPi + OpenVPN or Wireguard. I use PiVPN since it’s very easy to setup and configure.

7

You want a VPN Server software.

Also I seem to be having a hard time making a distinction with search
engines between the “I want to access my network remotely” type VPN and
the “I want to download movies and not get caught” type VPN. are there
terms that will help me distinguish the two?

  • VPN Provider (or what I would say: VPN Server Provider) : Like PIA, NordVPN, ExpressVPN and all the others.
  • VPN Server : The computer/server where the VPN Server Software runs.
  • VPN Server Software (or protocol or technology) : Like L2TP, OpenVPN, WireGuard
8

I’ve been using ZeroTier which is free for up to 50 devices or you can setup your own controller server.

9

You need to set up a VPN server on your home network. To do that, you need:

  1. A public IP address from your ISP
  2. DDNS service so that you can reach your VPN server by domain name in case your IP address changes
  3. VPN server software on a router or another low power device
  4. Port forwarding on your gateway router if you run the VPN server on a device other than your gateway router.

FYI: The Complete Guide to Setting up a WireGuard® VPN Server at Home with pcWRT – pcWRT

10

I’ll look into that, the ideal situation would be the ability to run whatever off of low-power hardware like a Pi or similar. So I can leave it on 24/7 (which none of my computers are)