OpenVPN with Networked Drive

[Pabla]

Hello all, I am fairly new to OpenVPN and have been using it fine for the past year to access my local network when away. My initial use for the VPN or 'Traffic Tunnel' as others may call it, was to be able to stream movies off my HDD connected to my RT-AC3100 running Merlin 384.19. I use an application called Infuse which is similar to Plex where all the encoding happens locally on the device itself, and I am using NFS to connect to the drive. The issue I've been running into is when I am in the same IP pool as my home network I am not able to connect to my HDD located at 192.168.1.1. The only solution I can think of is changing my homes subnet, but that's a fairly lengthy task since I have a lot of devices on my home talking locally to each other based on their IPs. Is there a sort of band-aid solution where I can still stream movies through my VPN while on the same subnet as my home network, or am I forced to change my homes subnet to something different to avoid and conflicts? Tia!

 

[eibgrad]

A fundamental aspect of the IP protocol is that *every* device must have a unique IP. When you use a NAT router, you introduce the possibility of having *multiple* devices on the same IP network wrt remote access, and therefore routing becomes ambiguous (should a reference to 192.168.1.1 remain local or be routed over the VPN?). The *correct* solution is to NEVER use the all-too-common 192.168.0.x and 192.168.1.x networks for your home network if you expect to access it remotely over a VPN. To do so is to ask for endless problems. Use something far less likely to cause a conflict, something more obscure (e.g., 10.99.34.x). Even then, there's always the possibility of a conflict if you just get unlucky, but there's little you can do about it. That's just an inherent problem w/ NAT.

That said, I suppose one way to get around the problem is to bind a *second* IP network (e.g., 192.168.2.x) to the router and remote device, then push that network to the VPN client. But whether that's practical will depend on what you're trying to reach. Obviously the remote service has to be bound to that alternate network.