Sharing VPN connection on a server

[skelesan]

I'm in the process of re-purposing an old pc for server duties (media streaming, RAID storage). I'm also going to subscribe to a VPN service through which I would like to route all internet traffic including mobiles, tablets, ps3, etc.

I've considered running the OpenVPN client on a new router, but it looks like even the latest routers restrict download speed due to the CPU bottleneck. Is it possible to share the OpenVPN connection on the server?

FYI the server does not have any wireless cards and most likely reside in the loft/somewhere with poor wireless reception so I would like to stick to CAT5/6.

e.g.

Tablet --> Router --> Server --> Back to Router --> VPN Provider

Cheers,

Skelesan

 

[Rainmaker]

I know this thread is over a month old, but did you ever sort this out? In the config you've posted it'd be pretty messy if not actually impossible to do properly.

What OS is the server running? I do a similar thing except my server has a spare wireless N dongle, so just connect the server to the VPN via CAT6e and then share that connection (TAP9 in Windows, tun0 on *nix) to the LAN wirelessly. Pretty easy and very effective. In my case each wireless client runs its own software from a DIFFERENT VPN provider. So actually I'm double hopping (behind two different VPN companies) for extra security. Port forwards still work fine and I'm getting good speeds - i.e. over 50Mbps easily.

In your case I'd connect the server to the VPN over ethernet to the main WAN connection and disable NAT to turn the router into a dumb modem. Or at least disable wifi on that router and just have it run a single wired connection to the server.

Then I'd use a second NIC in the server to connect it to a wireless reapeter's WAN port, and broadcast the connection in a more suitable position in the house. If you don't disable NAT on the main router you'll have to run this WAP on a separate subnet.

Like this:

Internet ---> modem/dumb router ---> server running VPN connection ---> ethernet to WAP ))) wireless to local devices

Else do what I do and place the server somehwere it can usefully serve wireless to the house, then run hotspot software on it. Connectify does this for Windows, and there's a good wifi hotspot script for *buntu based Linux distros here. I hope this was of some use.