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VPN will it solve my problem?

colporteur

I have an Archer AX11000 router that can support a VPN. I need to provide credentials to a VPN server to complete the configuration. I recall using VPN's at work. The VPN enabled me to remote into the company network from the Internet. I would like to VPN into my home network.

I've long since retired and don't have access to the network brains that made it work at the company. I would buy them a coffee and float the questions. To access the company network we had a dongle that generated a code along with a username and password to use on the VPN concentrator. If all the magic worked my laptop at home was sitting on the company network.

I'm with hand-in-hand asking the brains in the E14 Community this network question. Does the Archer router VPN provide this same access? I would need to connect the router to a service like NordVPN. Once that is done can I use the VPN to get into my home network or would that require some other networking device?

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  • Hi Sean,

    I think best advise is to avoid accessing your home network completely if you can avoid it. Corporate VPNs have the luxury of having decent equipment and up-to-date software and configs that are well tested. For home use, there are lots of decent services to file share, and they are very safe. 

    I use Onedrive, but there are others that are just as safe and easy to use. An alternative might be box.com but I've not used that in ages,

    For me, OneDrive is effectively free because it came with Microsoft 365 (which gets me the entire Office suite and e-mail, for a very reasonable cost which is even lower with family packages).

    Even if you need access to your network for any other purpose, it would be great to hear it, because there's likely going to be a good alternative solution for most use-cases, that avoid requiring a VPN.

  • in reply to shabaz

    "Corporate VPNs have the luxury of having decent equipment and up-to-date software and configs that are well tested."

    I believed that too, until I actually saw what companies are actually doing, and now I'm wondering how the world hasn't imploded yet.

    OpenVPN and Wireguard for example, are very secure, and if properly configured, they won't cause any issues. I'd go as far as trusting them more than what Microsoft/Amazon/Google/whoever else are doing.


  • in reply to vmate

    There are, for sure, backward companies, and all bets are off with what they do.

    However, the reality still is that one should be extremely wary of opening a port on a home-grade, very typically underpowered (especially for TP-Link! - that's business-as-normal for their products) router, which could fall over at any time with a flood of traffic, might well be running ancient firmware (it's an end-of-life router as it is), and then also maintain the software or OS install to be up-to-date too, which might be running on some PC with a network interface, both of which were never designed for acting as a server in the first place.

    There often is no major benefit to all that risk when it's possible to use a cloud service to get many things done instead.

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  • in reply to vmate

    There are, for sure, backward companies, and all bets are off with what they do.

    However, the reality still is that one should be extremely wary of opening a port on a home-grade, very typically underpowered (especially for TP-Link! - that's business-as-normal for their products) router, which could fall over at any time with a flood of traffic, might well be running ancient firmware (it's an end-of-life router as it is), and then also maintain the software or OS install to be up-to-date too, which might be running on some PC with a network interface, both of which were never designed for acting as a server in the first place.

    There often is no major benefit to all that risk when it's possible to use a cloud service to get many things done instead.

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