VPN solution for Smart home and media sharing.

[Sleepy_Eyez]

Hello All,

I’ve spent the last 2 months researching for the right solution but with 2 children under 2 years old it can be very difficult to find time.

I’m looking for the best security solution using VPN with Private Internet Access to secure my home network.

My ISP is Rogers with 100Mbps(average 150Mbps) down and 10Mbps up. I have 2 router I could use which are Netgear R7000 and DLink EA2700.

Most important is to secure my smart home devices. I have a Smartthings Hub, Nest thermostat, Amcrest 1080P IP cam(I will have to setup port forwarding) and WeMo light switch. Future purchases will be Harmony remote, Ring doorbell and more IP cams. Getting all this into running on a VPN is important. These devices do not require tons of bandwidth and exactly why I am thinking of running these on the DLink EA2700 DD-WRT router(VPN speed of 20Mbps).

My other concern is VPN speed drops because of encryption which I primarily need for Amazon Fire TV 2, Minix Neo x7, DLNA speakers and ChromeCast. If I connect this to Netgear R7000 with DD-WRT, I only achieve about 30 Mbps with VPN.

If I connect the 2 routers to my modem/router(Hitron CGN 3-ROG) from my ISP, I will get roughly 60 Mbps total VPN speed. Can i get these under the same local network to share media files?

I was also hoping to use the DLink EA2700 as a repeater to extend my coverage.

Are there any solution that will work for me?
Can I get a Raspberry Pi for encryption? And how is the impact for VPN speed?

 

[RMerlin]

A VPN doesn't do anything to secure your LAN.

 

[System Error Message]

A VPN doesn't do anything to secure your LAN.

It does when it means routing those devices that like to be exposed through a more secure way instead of port forwarding.

VPN speeds are restricted by CPU and your weakest link (usually upload). Do not port forward your smart home devices or media sharing or such, rather through a VPN you could access them like as if you were on LAN via the IP address. If however layer 2 is required such as with DLNA and some smart home devices than you will need IGMP proxy.

If your smart home devices need to connect to some server than no vpn or proxy will help you, you should ditch it.

 

[RMerlin]

t does when it means routing those devices that like to be exposed through a more secure way instead of port forwarding.

He's talking about using a VPN client such as PIA, not about remote access through a VPN server, so in his case, it wouldn't do anything to help secure his LAN.

 

[Sleepy_Eyez]

He's talking about using a VPN client such as PIA, not about remote access through a VPN server, so in his case, it wouldn't do anything to help secure his LAN.

Sorry but I'm not the greatest at explaining networking.

You're telling me that I can't secure my LAN with PIA?

But if I connect my modem to a router with OpenVPN I can reroute all my traffic to PIA server.

VPN speeds are restricted by CPU and your weakest link (usually upload)

This is my issue and trying to find a solution for it. The CPU on router are not the greatest yet.

I may have to use my Android box for encryption and create a Hot Spot from there. But I don't know if extend the range with other routers.

Processor

Quad-Core Cortex A9 Processor (1.6GHz)

GPU

Quad-Core Mali 400.

Memory

2GB DDR3

Internal Storage

16GB NAND Flash

Wireless Connectivity

802.11 b/g/n Dual-Band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz / 5.0GHz), Bluetooth support, USB 3G dongle support (not included)

 

[RMerlin]

Sorry but I'm not the greatest at explaining networking.

You're telling me that I can't secure my LAN with PIA?

But if I connect my modem to a router with OpenVPN I can reroute all my traffic to PIA server.

All this does is that it encrypts the traffic so your ISP cannot snoop on it, and your remote IP will be hidden for whatever remote server you connect to. It doesn't make your LAN any more secure. An IoT device with a software vulnerability still remains vulnerable, especially if these are remotely accessible over a port forward rather than through a remote server (which brings in an entirely different level of vulnerability, one against which you cannot, once again, protect yourself). And the traffic between the PIA server and the remote service provider remains unencrypted if the IoT device doesn't use SSL.

It doesn't add any security to media sharing either. If you're talking about sharing over the Internet, sharing would still need to be done with your public IP, not through the tunnel. It doesn't make it any more secure at all.

Those VPN providers address only very specific needs.

 

[yorgi]

I think maybe is trying to say is he needs to setup his own VPN server so he can access his files, printing, remote desktop from another computer so that it can be secure. I think using PIA is for the wrong reasons but if you are trying to secure your network and media file sharing over another connection then setting up a VPN server will be a secure way of doing it. But you can also use remote desktop and that is just as secure in my opinion.
is that what you are trying to do?