Can u point my router to a cloud VPN so that all devices on my home network go through the VPN?

VPN
1

I am looking for a VPN service and seems like Reddit recommends mullvad. They have a 5 device limit, so I was wondering if I could just point my router to it, so that all devices tunnel through it on my home network, and so I don’t have to set up the vpn individually on all devices.

Will this work?

I also want to set up a pihole (either standalone on a pi zero, or on my home server with seafile and plex), can I configure it so that the pihole blocks ads and the vpn gives me privacy for browsing and torrenting? Will they work well together?

If this works, will it cause any issues when I am working from home on my corporate laptop? Will the work vpn just tunnel through mullvad and work fine?

Lastly with a set up like this, can I point my mobile device to also go through the pihole and mullvad when I am out of the house on the mobile network?

Thanks for your help!!

2

I ran my with laptop with corporate VPN through my personal VPN provider, configured on my home router, for a long time. Then one day the corp VPN would not connect.

So had to bypass the personal VPN for the laptop. Multiple ways to do it. Easy with something like pfSense or OpenWRT. Not doable with most home oriented routers.

For torrenting Linux ISO’s, I’d still recommend the VPN client on your torrenting device with the BitTorrent client bound to the VPN interface.

Note if you do double VPN, you may have to adjust the MTU value on the nested VPN client. Especially if running Wireguard on the router and Wireguard or OpenVPN on the nestef VPN client.

3

That’s super helpful!
Sounds like pointing the router to the VPN and creating a guest network for the work machine is the way to go! Thanks!!

4

Oh, I can’t just use a guest network on my net gear router for the corporate device like the person above suggested?

What’s the benefit of binding the VPN on the client as well as the router? If its already on the router wouldn’t all traffic flow through the VPN regardless?

I have no idea what an MTU value is. Lol

Thanks for your help!

5

Depends on your Netgear router. You need to see if it allows the guest wifi network to bypass the VPN. Normally, in home oriented routers, it does not. If you set a VPN up, all traffic goes through it.

Running the VPN on the client machine and binding to the VPN interface is just another level of protection. Also, that will allow port forwarding through the VPN for better torrent performance. I doubt you will be able to do VPN port forwarding in the router.

MTU is basically the size of the packets sent.

6

Hmm, cool. I’ll look into all this and try to learn how to configure it properly. Thanks a lot!!