My brother lives abroad and he wants to be able to easily connect his TV/tablets to a wifi router that is always connected to a vpn so that he can watch geo-blocked content. The big caveat here is that he would like have the option to choose connecting with or without the VPN depending on which ssid he connects to. So essentially he would have “HomeWifi” for regular connections and “HomeWifiVPN” for using the VPN.
His current network is just the Starlink wireless router. My first thought was just to get another router and set it up as a wireless repeater, but the router would need to be able to operate as a completely wireless ap, since the Starlink router doesn’t have any ports to support a hardwired connection. Anyone know of a good router that would support this or is there a better way to get this set up?
TLDR; these are the requirements
Two separate wifi networks/SSIDs
One wifi network is always on VPN; other wifi network is not on vpn
Any new router/repeater must support completely wireless AP mode so it can act as a repeater for the Starlink Wifi without being connected to the Starlink router.
Many Asus routers with Merlin software makes this easy. I have an Asus RT AC86U set up this way. It has openVPN capability and I have it setup for NordVPN
I have a gl-net Beryl AX router that can easily do this. I have it in my hotel now and is setup to do this. It has nordVPN, wireguard (as well as Adguard) support built in. I have it set up to connect to the hotel wifi via 2.4 g SSID. I then have a separate 5g SSID that I use for client connections. There is additional guest network capability that I am not using.
Both routers allow you to set up multiple SSID access points with/without VPN for each. Both allow you to set up rules for connected MAC addresses to either use or bypass the VPN. Both have guest network support.
I think there are many brands that can do what you want. I am quite satisfied with both the Asus and gl-net router
Awesome, thanks for the info! I will look into these. I didn’t even consider the ability to just set up rules for separate MAC addresses…that would actually be perfect.
There is a lot of flexibility in the rule making process. You can make rules for MAC addresses and ip addresses. You can also create rules for entire subnets (like 192.168.1.1/24)
The gl-internet router also has Adguard Home built in. So all you need to do is enable it in the interface …