Best Set Up

[dunczjf]

Hi All

First post here, so go easy on me.
I need to be clear from the off, that I am capable with computers and IT, but networking a VPN is still relatively new to me, I am far from a Super-User!!
In my old house I set up SoftEther on a RaspberryPi running Linux to enable me to remotely access my internal network, and hence access off of my kit (Media Server, CCTV, etc etc)
I got the set up working following the great tutorials on the site, and it all worked great.

We have now moved onto a boat - so my internet is now over 4G. Because of this I am now stuck behind CGNAT (and no, there are no 4G ISPs in the UK that will give me a static IPv4 address or IPv6).

Given that a V PN solution worked so well previously and I have a slight familiarity with it I would like to carry on with this solution.

As far as I understand, one solution to the CGNAT problem is to rent a cloudserver (which I have done for a very small monthly sum - £5 in fact), set this up as a SoftEther server and then use the RaspberryPi to connect to this server. This will allow me a static address to connect to externally.

My question is, what is the best set up for SoftEther in this scenario?
Would a basic server/client set up work, with the couldserver being the server and the RaspberryPi connected to my internal network as the client or would I need to look at setting up a LAN-LAN bridge?
Secondly, I want to ensure that all of the internet traffic from the internal LAN does not go through the cloudserver - would a LAN to LAN bridge achieve this?

Hoping the knowledge of the forum can help.

[itpltd]

I will make a number of assumptions and please correct me if I am wrong.

1. You have a seperate 4G router on the boat
2. The PI is not your default gateway
3. You have multiple devices on the LAN
4. The PI has a static IP address on your LAN
5. When not on your boat you are establishing a the VPN connection for a mobile device of some sort (Phone,tablet,laptop)

You would setup LAN to LAN bridge connection between from the boat LAN and the cloud server. The softether client on the mobile devices will connect to the cloud server and because the cloud server has a bridged connection they will receive an IP address from boat router

When the mobile device is connected to the cloud VPN server it actually has two network connections one for the mobile ISP whis is houw all of its internet traffic will be routed and the second will be your boat LAN

You will need to ensure that the private addressing scheme you use on the boat does not overlap with the IP addressing scheme that the mobile device has when it is connected to the mobile ISP

This becomes a bit more complex if there are other networks to be attched to the bridged VPN, in this case we would add the layer switch (virtual router) and route traffic between the various networks

As a side note, I would try and ensure that your 4G BB is an LTE+/4G+ enabled service. Here in Ireland we get 220/40 data rates on LTE+ as distinct from 70/20 on standard LTE/4G

Hope this helps, feel free to ask any questions

Peter

[dunczjf]

Hi

Apologies for not replying sooner. I was expecting a notification of a reply to my post.
Thank you so much - that is really helpful!