VPN... but for a portion of my network?

VPN
1

Hi, a bit of an odd case but hoping you guys have a solution - me and my wife both WFH, however I have the need to have my network hopped on VPN connecting to different locations around north america for my work. Now, I currently have a standard eero 6 setup and I know eero itself has an option for VPN with it’s eero+ sub, but I can’t connect the whole network to VPN without affecting my wifes connection to her work. Any suggestions? Do I need to somehow split my network so I can configure my preferences and not touch hers? If so, how exactly would I be able to do that?

Edit: thank you all for the tips!

2

Why not just run your work VPN client on your computer and connect from that??

3

You can connect a device client (your work computer) to a specific VPN. No need to set your network with a VPN.

You can do that though with a lot of routers, not sure if your eero has this option

4

If you have a router like a TP-Link x20, you can install a VPN client on the router and choose which devices will route through the VPN and which devices don’t. It works great.

5

The short answer is that yes, this can be done by segmenting your networks into multiple subnets and routing one of those subnets through the VPN tunnel. You can google for this sort of setup as it is a fairly straightforward process if you are familiar with networking.

The larger issue is whether you can do it with your Eero router. I suspect you may not have sufficient flexibility, but I don’t know enough about the Eero software to say.

6

Sounds like you’re talking about segmenting your network. You put your wife on one subnet (ie 192.168.0.0/24) and you put your computer on a second subnet (192.168.1.0/24.) Unless you set up a route, neither subnet will see the other so you can connect yours to the VPN and it won’t affect your wife’s at all.

7

This is exactly what I’m looking for, I’ll look into this router, thanks!

8

It sounds to me like that router effectively has a virtual WAN port, and allows you to assign specific devices to specific WANs. Do I understand that correctly?

Just wondering what situation makes this necessary (having the work VPN client on the router rather than the PC.) only thing I can think of is your printer that you need to use for work doesn’t work over USB. Anything else I can think of should include employer providing a business/enterprise router and creating two isolated local networks, on a single ISP connection.

9

And you can add additional x20 nodes if you need more coverage. It’s a great system with lots of customization.

10

The ability to do route specific clients through the VPN is called split tunneling in case you want to read more about it.

11

It’s 10x easier to just run a vpn client on your computer and you avoid having to buy and configure a new router.

12

You can set it to VPN your whole network or choose just the clients you want, anywhere from 1 to all, and it can be easily changed on and off. I use it for WiFi clients that I want to have on a VPN.

13

Thanks I’ll read into this