Here’s the scenario at home: I have a cable modem with its router feature turned off, with an eero mesh system behind it, for my LAN. The eero gateway doesn’t have a VPN server, but supposedly it allows VPN traffic through it without any setup. The eero gateway has an active DHCP server on it, doling out the LAN IP addresses. I want to be able to VPN into my LAN so it’s as if my remote PC is on my home’s network.
The method I was thinking on using: Put ClearOS Community Edition in standalone mode on a PC on my LAN. I’d like to disable the COS DHCP server, but I don’t know if that’s even possible while using OpenVPN. I really only want to use COS for this purpose. I’ve used it before with OpenVPN, but that was in gateway mode without another router in the picture. I just don’t want the COS server to conflict with the eero since everything is running well on my LAN. I don’t want to compromise my working home network.
Any helpful hints would be greatly appreciated.
The method I was thinking on using: Put ClearOS Community Edition in standalone mode on a PC on my LAN. I’d like to disable the COS DHCP server, but I don’t know if that’s even possible while using OpenVPN. I really only want to use COS for this purpose. I’ve used it before with OpenVPN, but that was in gateway mode without another router in the picture. I just don’t want the COS server to conflict with the eero since everything is running well on my LAN. I don’t want to compromise my working home network.
Any helpful hints would be greatly appreciated.
In OpenVPN
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Accepted Answer
In standalone mode, ClearOS NAT's the OpenVPN connection to the ClearOS WAN IP, so, to all the devices on the LAN, the OpenVPN traffic appears to come from the ClearOS server IP and not from an OpenVPN IP address (10.8.0.x). It is the only sensible way of getting the routing to work. Otherwise you'd need to add a static route to your router to send traffic to 10.8.0.x via ClearOS instead of the normal route through the router's WAN.
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This worked like a charm, but can you explain how the IP addressing structure works? I need my remote computer on my home's LAN, but once I'm connected to it through OpenVPN, I don't see an IP address matching my network's subnet (i.e. 192.168.7.x) for my TAP adapter. The TAP address is like a 10.8.0.6, and the DHCP server is 10.8.0.5. Here's what I get on my remote PC when connected to my home's LAN via OpenVPN:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : albringstream.poweredbyclear.com
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : TAP-Windows Adapter V9
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-FF-74-FA-49-97
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::415a:4e15:92ab:98f3%11(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.8.0.6(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.252
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Saturday, January 15, 2022 1:13:15 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, January 15, 2023 1:13:15 PM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.8.0.5
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 117505908
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-22-13-89-ED-B0-6E-BF-1A-8B-C0
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.9.200
Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : 192.168.7.66
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
My home's LAN (via the eero) is 192.168.7.0/24. I thought I read somewhere that's it's not a good idea to have the same client and server network addresses in OpenVPN. I'm just trying to wrap my brain around this. I've used ClearOS for years and OpenVPN for a number of those, but I've never completely understood how it works.
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