I live in NYC and work for a FAANG company. I would really like to be able to live abroad, at least for part of the year. Unfortunately, the company doesn’t allow us to do so, so I am trying to figure out ways to do this. I have a company-issued work laptop that has its own VPN on it to access the company servers. Of course one option would be to simply use a VPN service, but I’m sure it would be fairly detectable. It seems like the better option would be to set up a VPN on my home network which I can access from anywhere in the world, and make the IP address look like I am still at home. I would like to not have to download any VPN-related programs on my work laptop. Can anyone provide guidance on how to best accomplish this? Thanks!
You may want to look at the Wiki at r/digitalnomad and search through the posting there, as this is a standard question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/wiki/vpn/
Can someone link me to a walk through of how to set up a home VPN for use abroad please? I have little network knowledge, need a “for dummies” version please. And yes I am ready to just resign if I am caught.
Add a VPN server at home. Use a VPN client router while remote, to connect to your home VPN.
You should be able to test this scenario from home with a VPN client router at home. Your employer may be able to see the presence of a secondary VPN, and if confronted you can just say you’re using some new security technology. If confronted, you will have to judge under the circumstances if the VPN will work overseas.
You can put a VPN on an economical raspberry pi with piVPN for the home server or you can buy a VPN server router for home.
Are there any good walkthroughs for doing this that you recommend?
The piVPN site is very good and installation couldn’t be easier.
I have not used VPN client router (I find it necessary to only use VPN for one device so I use client software on that device no client router involvement.
I suggest you locate a good VPN server router and scour their website for instructions on how to use the VPN function. Each mfg’er is going to have different menus so a general walkthrough may not be available.
You will need to make a decision about the protocol you wish to use, WireGuard or OpenVPN. I don’t have a strong point of view except to say I use OpenVPN and I wouldn’t disagree if another chose WG.
Searching Amazon for “client server VPN routers“ gives candidates.