Use MT2500A as VPN Host on LAN

Router VPN, DNS, Leaks
1

My Netgear WiFi router supports only OpenVPN Host and I want to use WireGuard. Is it possible to connect an MT2500A as a device on my LAN, forward port 51280 through the router to the MT2500A, and use a WireGuard Client remotely to access devices on the LAN?

Specifically, I want to connect to the router (192.168.1.1) by VPNing into the MT2500A WireGuard VPN and then opening a web browser on the remote client to 192.168.1.1 on the LAN.

3

The reason this question was posted is because I purchased an MT2500A from Amazon and reading the User Guide has not convinced me that “this can work”. The choice seems to be (1) unbox the MT2500A and experiment, or (b) return it to Amazon and “give up”.

Was hoping someone would say, “oh, sure. THIS is how you make it work.”

1 Like
4

Hi,

Yes, this setup should work. You can keep the Netgear router as your main router and connect the WAN port of the MT2500A to one of its LAN ports.

Please make sure the Netgear router has a public IP address, and assign/reserve a fixed IP address for the MT2500A on the Netgear LAN.

Then set up the WireGuard Server on the MT2500A and forward the WireGuard UDP port (e.g. 51280) from the Netgear router to the WAN IP of the MT2500A.

You can refer to our guides below for the setup:

5

Thanks for responding. Where I got lost was how to get from the MT2500A to the primary router LAN. Since the primary router will assign a 192.168.1.x IP to the MT2500A WAN port and I want to connect to 192.168.1.1

  • Will the MT2500A detect that the proper router is back through the WAN port? or
  • Do I connect the MT2500A LAN port to the primary router and say that the MT2500A also has a LAN IP subnet of 192.168.1.x

I do not want the MT2500A responding to DHCP requests from the primary LAN.

6

Hi,

Please connect the MT2500A WAN port to a LAN port of the primary router. If the primary router assigns the MT2500A WAN an address such as 192.168.1.2/24 , the MT2500A will recognize 192.168.1.0/24 as its upstream/WAN network, so traffic to 192.168.1.1 will be routed through the WAN port.
There is no need to connect the MT2500A LAN port back to the primary LAN or configure its LAN as 192.168.1.x .

The topology would therefore be:

Primary Router (`192.168.1.1` )
→ LAN port
→ MT2500A WAN (`192.168.1.x` )
→ MT2500A LAN (`192.168.8.1/24` )

The DHCP server on the MT2500A only serves its own LAN network, it will not interfere with DHCP on the primary router's LAN.

For the WireGuard Server, you need to forward the WireGuard UDP port on the primary router to the WAN IP of the MT2500A.