VPN to remote device?

[bobg8zwf]

Happy New Year.

Simple question (I hope). I did a search but didn't really find an answer.

I am in my home in Shanghai. My other property is in UK.

Here in China I have AC66 and in UK I have AC88 routers. I have vpn server set up in UK and VPN client set up in China. Works fine and after connecting, I have internet access as though I am located in UK (overcoming the Great Firewall).
But I want to add something. Attached to the router in UK are some devices (one is a Slingbox and other is a CCTV system). I want to be able to access these as though they on my local LAN in China. Is this possible? If so, can someone point me in the correct direction to achieve this please.
Sure, I can access both via WAN and port, but I want to have them show on my local LAN.

Would appreciate any advice.

Thanks

 

[jomic]

You can contact to PureVPN, they might help you in this. You can easily ask via their live chat...!

 

[Xentrk]

Happy New Year.

Simple question (I hope). I did a search but didn't really find an answer.

I am in my home in Shanghai. My other property is in UK.

Here in China I have AC66 and in UK I have AC88 routers. I have vpn server set up in UK and VPN client set up in China. Works fine and after connecting, I have internet access as though I am located in UK (overcoming the Great Firewall).
But I want to add something. Attached to the router in UK are some devices (one is a Slingbox and other is a CCTV system). I want to be able to access these as though they on my local LAN in China. Is this possible? If so, can someone point me in the correct direction to achieve this please.
Sure, I can access both via WAN and port, but I want to have them show on my local LAN.

Would appreciate any advice.

Thanks

If you find the solution, I would love to know! Best I could find were examples of sharing network drives, not media devices.

 

[yorgi]

Happy New Year.

Simple question (I hope). I did a search but didn't really find an answer.

I am in my home in Shanghai. My other property is in UK.

Here in China I have AC66 and in UK I have AC88 routers. I have vpn server set up in UK and VPN client set up in China. Works fine and after connecting, I have internet access as though I am located in UK (overcoming the Great Firewall).
But I want to add something. Attached to the router in UK are some devices (one is a Slingbox and other is a CCTV system). I want to be able to access these as though they on my local LAN in China. Is this possible? If so, can someone point me in the correct direction to achieve this please.
Sure, I can access both via WAN and port, but I want to have them show on my local LAN.

Would appreciate any advice.

Thanks

When you are connected to your server in the UK and have Direct clients to redirect Internet traffic option enabled also Respond to DNS and Advertise DNS to clients, there is no reason why you can't have that slingbox, CCTV etc in China and assign them VPN ip addresses and you should be able to stream anything you want. All you would have to do on your client side is either setup policy rules or make the router have all traffic via the vpn. Any device that you have on the router in China will have internet Feed from UK.

 

[bobg8zwf]

When you are connected to your server in the UK and have Direct clients to redirect Internet traffic option enabled also Respond to DNS and Advertise DNS to clients, there is no reason why you can't have that slingbox, CCTV etc in China and assign them VPN ip addresses and you should be able to stream anything you want. All you would have to do on your client side is either setup policy rules or make the router have all traffic via the vpn. Any device that you have on the router in China will have internet Feed from UK.

Thanks for that yorgi.
The remote router is set up in that way. Except for "assign them VPN ip addresses". I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean here.
Both routers have base LAN address 192.168.1.254 and the remote devices have static addresses allocated inside that range. VPN range is 192.168.10.xx. Do you mean that I need to give the remote devices addresses in the 10.xx range? What then happens if VPN is not connected? Do the remote devices still work locally and remotely when VPN is connected?
I am being a bit cautious of changing things remotely and locking myself out of the router or the devices because there is nobody at the property and I would have no way to fix it until the summer when I go there again.

 

[Wutikorn]

Works fine and after connecting, I have internet access as though I am located in UK (overcoming the Great Firewall).

What's your settings? How did you manage to bypass China's DPI engine?

But I want to add something. Attached to the router in UK are some devices (one is a Slingbox and other is a CCTV system). I want to be able to access these as though they on my local LAN in China. Is this possible? If so, can someone point me in the correct direction to achieve this please.
Sure, I can access both via WAN and port, but I want to have them show on my local LAN.

I am using OpenVPN with Push LAN to clients enabled. My VPN client can access devices connected to my router. For example, I can connect to my WD NAS interface by 192.168.x.x(static IP), and as I remember my devices IPs, I can also type "\\192..168.x.x" in file explorer (Windows) to access storage as it won't show in Network in File Explorer.

Not sure if this is the answer you are looking for.

 

[kvic]

I want to be able to access these as though they on my local LAN in China. Is this possible?

With stock ASUSWRT or its derivatives, very unlikely you can get it to work. Assume you're using OpenVPN. Your best bet is switching to TAP (instead of TUN) and allocate a small range out of 192.168.1.x which isn't used by both UK and Shanghai homes. But still I have doubt it'll work for some of the apps you mentioned if any at all.

Depends on your skillset. If you go with a pair of ER-X or hEXr3, sure you can do with more advanced routing protocols available on these platforms.

 

[bobg8zwf]

Thanks for your comments guys.
@Wutikorn Once the tunnel is running, I have no problem to access stuff that is blocked in China (google, youtube etc), neither do I have any problem with, for example BBC iPlayer, which is geo-locked to UK ip addresses.

I've been trying to get my head around why I don't see the remote devices on my local lan, once the tunnel is open. I can ping them using their remote lan addresses, but they don't appear as local devices.

Never mind. I do not want to mess around too much with the remote router or the device settings. If I accidentally lock myself out, then I'm screwed until July. So better leave things for now.

 

[Wutikorn]

Thanks for your comments guys.
@Wutikorn Once the tunnel is running, I have no problem to access stuff that is blocked in China (google, youtube etc), neither do I have any problem with, for example BBC iPlayer, which is geo-locked to UK ip addresses.

I've been trying to get my head around why I don't see the remote devices on my local lan, once the tunnel is open. I can ping them using their remote lan addresses, but they don't appear as local devices.

Never mind. I do not want to mess around too much with the remote router or the device settings. If I accidentally lock myself out, then I'm screwed until July. So better leave things for now.

Do you add custom scripts to OpenVPN? Or do you just use GUI to set things up? I remember searching about China's firewall and it said that China runs DPI to block normal OpenVPN.

By local devices, do you mean accessing it from file explorer(network part)? In that case, try typing \\x.x.x.x (your device's IP) in file explorer location path to see if you can access it and map drive.

 

[bobg8zwf]

Do you add custom scripts to OpenVPN? Or do you just use GUI to set things up? I remember searching about China's firewall and it said that China runs DPI to block normal OpenVPN.

By local devices, do you mean accessing it from file explorer(network part)? In that case, try typing \\x.x.x.x (your device's IP) in file explorer location path to see if you can access it and map drive.

No, I am not using a script any more, purely GUI. I use policy based routing where I have a group of ip addresses which are pushed to vpn and the remainder go to local wan. That way, I can choose which device uses vpn and which uses local wan. (And in the case of this pc, if I use wired lan it goes to vpn, if I use wireless it goes to local wan).

For the remote devices. Take for example the Slingbox. If I open the slingplayer software, it lists all the Slingboxes associated with my account. I have one box local here and this is shown as "local lan", but the box in UK is shown as "internet", regardless of the vpn being active or not. So it is not able to resolve the remote box as being on a vpn connected tunnel when it searches for online devices.
I will leave this for now and think about it a bit more!

 

[Samir]

Easiest way to do what you want is to completely connect the two sites over a site-to-site tunnel. Then both will seem to be local to each other. You would be able to access everything from both sides of the world.

I actually use this when I visit the in-laws in India or when I'm at my parents home vs home. I've got site to sites connecting everything including printers. I can print something for my parents if they can't even if the document is on their computer.

 

[yorgi]

Thanks for that yorgi.
The remote router is set up in that way. Except for "assign them VPN ip addresses". I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean here.
Both routers have base LAN address 192.168.1.254 and the remote devices have static addresses allocated inside that range. VPN range is 192.168.10.xx. Do you mean that I need to give the remote devices addresses in the 10.xx range? What then happens if VPN is not connected? Do the remote devices still work locally and remotely when VPN is connected?
I am being a bit cautious of changing things remotely and locking myself out of the router or the devices because there is nobody at the property and I would have no way to fix it until the summer when I go there again.

if you go to the advanced section of your VPN server
there are these options that have to enable.
Push LAN to clients - YES
Respond to DNS - YES
Advertise DNS to clients - YES
when you connect to the server you can access mapped drives from any computer that is on the same LAN
If you have issues where you cannot reach a specific drive, if its a windows PC you need to make sure that you allow access to the drive via your firewall rules. Read
I have explained at the bottom of this article.
https://www.snbforums.com/threads/how-to-setup-a-vpn-server-with-asus-routers.33638/

 

[Tomsonn]

I have been using HMA VPN. It is working perfectly for me. You may give it a try.

 

[bobg8zwf]

Thanks for comments. I got it working ok the other day and have been testing it.

 

[jeanericblass]

hmmm nice discussion however i am using HMA and i am very much satisfy with it's services.

 

[bobg8zwf]

I am using HMA for unblocking stuff that cannot be accessed from China. But last year China blocked almost all HMA servers. Only about 3 work now and none in UK. But either way, using HMA would not have solved my original question.
Currently I am in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh), all HMA servers work fine from here, so Vietnam is "nice and free"!!

 

[bobg8zwf]

Does other vpn like Astrill and Nord work in China or they have got their servers blocked like HMA?

I don't know for sure, but I've been told that some are working fine. HMA servers are blocked at ip level, except for 3 or 4.