Remote access to home network using VPN server of GL-AR150

Tlobo · 2019-04-15T12:32:56.489Z

Hello everybody!

I’d like to know if anyone has a good reference for me to learn how to use the GL-AR150 as a device (ethernet-)connected to my router at home, so that it creates a VPN server to allow me to access my network remotely.
That is, I want to access my home network from work, for example, through a VPN. I want to make sure I don’t need a (paid) VPN provider. I just want to leave the GL-AR150 continuously connected.

Thanks for the help,

alzhao · 2019-04-15T12:40:29.988Z

Because AR150 is behind your main router, you need to set up port forwarding in your main router and set up OpenVPN server or WireGuard Server.

For example, if your server runs at port 111, you need to port forward 111 from your main router’s 111 port the the router’s 111 port.

Then generate vpn config for your client and connect from Internet.

Tlobo · 2019-04-15T12:43:58.975Z

Hey @alzhao, thanks for the quick reply.
Do you know anywhere I can read more about how to set up port forwarding for this specific implementation? I am a bit new to VPN and router configuration.
Thanks again,

Johnex · 2019-04-15T12:51:05.359Z

Since you need to set up port forwarding on your main router, you will need to find the brand and model of it, and find it on this site:

Port Forward

How To Set Up Port Forwarding - Port Forward

An explanation of port forwarding and the necessary steps to set up port forwarding in your router.

They have a list of most routers and how to set up port forwarding on them. If that fails, check youtube or google for a guide.

For the VPN server itself, you can read here:

docs.gl-inet.com

OpenVPN Client - GL.iNet Docs

Documentation for GL.iNet Productions

Tlobo · 2019-04-15T13:04:40.603Z

Thanks @Johnex. I think the VPN server configuration I can handle.
My only concern is understanding port forwarding. Is this only an enabled/disabled kind of configuration, or I’ll actually need to check on the GL-AR150 for some parameter and match it in the port forwarding settings of the router?
The “portfoward.com” link you’ve sent indeed has a page for my router, but it’s only a screenshot. From what I gather, I’ll need to check the IP address of GL-AR150 and just enable port forwarding for this IP in the router page. Is this correct?
Thanks again,

Johnex · 2019-04-15T13:10:08.542Z

You don’t need to do any port forwarding on your AR150, just the main router.

The OpenVPN default port is UDP 1194. So you want to add a new rule in your main router that will open port 1194 and route it to the IP of the AR150 and port 1194. You can also add a static IP to the AR150 in your main router if you wish. That will prevent the IP of the AR150 from changing in the future.

Tlobo · 2019-04-15T13:15:47.062Z

Hmmm… That’s good, now I understand a bit better what @alzhao meant when mentioning port 111 for the router and port 111 again later. This means the list of actions I must do are:

on the router: set static IP for AR150
on the router: open port 1194 and direct it to the static IP I defined
on AR150: configure OpenVPN and save config file to use in my computers.

That should do it, right?

Johnex · 2019-04-15T13:17:30.527Z

Yup that is all you need to do
If your router allows setting the port forward protocol, ie TCP, UDP or Both, keep that in mind when setting up the OpenVPN configuration, as you can use TCP or UDP and both configurations must match on that too.

Tlobo · 2019-04-15T13:19:12.554Z

Perfect! Thanks a lot for the help! I’ve been reading on this all Sunday to no avail! Hehehe…
I’ll try to do it this weekend, if I need anymore help I’ll come back!
Many thanks, again!

Johnex · 2019-04-15T13:21:10.874Z

One last thing. Nowadays OpenVPN is quite old and clunky, I would recommend a new Wireguard configuration instead. There are clients for all the platforms, or you can use a second GL router as client. The configuration would be the same for wireguard, with the port forwarding requirement. Read up on that, since you will get much higher performance out of the AR150 with Wireguard vs OpenVPN.

Tlobo · 2019-04-15T13:26:13.678Z

Oh, good to know! But I thought that the AR150 couldn’t use WireGuard because it requires a 3.xxx firmware…
If I’m mistaken and I actually have access to it, I’ll try to set up WireGuard instead.

Johnex · 2019-04-15T13:58:55.145Z

There is v3 firmware in the “testing” directory of the gl downloads page. Here is a direct link:

http://download.gl-inet.com.s3.amazonaws.com/firmware/ar150/testing/openwrt-ar150-3.022-0329.bin

Tlobo · 2019-04-15T14:00:14.958Z

Ah, that’s awesome! Thank you very much!

Tlobo · 2019-04-25T21:05:25.722Z

Hey everyone, thanks again for the help before (specially @Johnex), everything worked just fine!
I have an additional question regarding the VPN Server.

I am able to access my home network and control my routers through the VPN.
However, I am unable to print through the VPN.
Any ideas?

Thanks,

Johnex · 2019-04-25T21:35:38.666Z

Did you end up using Wireguard or OpenVPN?

Tlobo · 2019-04-26T04:03:29.193Z

I have both servers running, but I’m only using WireGuard.

Johnex · 2019-04-26T08:23:30.260Z

@kyson-lok Kyson is anything access another device on the network with wireguard?