Raspberry Pi WiFi VPN Router

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi all

Hope everyone is well?

I'm looking to setup a Raspberry Pi in the following fashion as a WiFi VPN Router:

I was hoping for some advice on what the most compatible USB WiFi dongle was to use in this project?

Thanks in advance.

Kris

2

usb wifi is generally a bad idea, though.

1 Like
3

Hi Frollic

Thank you for the quick reply!

What would you recommend, basically I'm looking to setup a device that will host a VPN connection on my network that other devices can connect to and use that VPN tunnel.

I have a spare Raspberry Pi which prompted my initial post, would it be better to use a cheap router that's compatible with OpenWRT instead?

Thanks in advance.

4

Apart from that, I would reconsider that approach. The onboard wireless of the RPi is very limited (features, throughput, range, tiny low quality antenna) - and USB wireless is plagued by very similar issues (on top of drivers that barely support AP mode in the first place). Yes, the RPi4 can be a very fast wired router, it also offers lots of performance as VPN endpoint, but it's totally unsuited for wireless tasks - a 15 year old draft-n plastic router will easily beat it when it comes to wireless uses.

There is much better hardware for this task available in traditional wireless routers, faster, longer range and cheaper.

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5

Hi slh

Thanks for the quick response also, sorry I didn't see your reply as the screen hadn't refreshed.

I could go the WiFi router approach, I'm only looking to buy cheap though. What would you recommend?

I have a Draytek VigorAP 180, is this compatible with OpenWRT?

6

where are you, geographically ... ?

7

I'm based in the UK :+1:

8

how small does the device need to be ?

plain full size router, or smaller, like the RPi ?

9

Size is not really a constraint, as long as it can give sufficient bandwidth to the devices I'm connecting to it and that it's not overly expensive.

Thank you

10

that's a very vague requirement :wink:

if you don't need more than 10MB/s, get a BT home hub 5, they're £10 on ebay.

11

Haha sorry, so basically it'll be used for a couple of Fire TV Sticks that can connect to the WiFi VPN solution.

12

then the BT HH 5 would be enough, unless you require 4k.

if you already have a wifi network, set up the Pi as a VPN gateway, and simply redirect or
make sure your Fire TVs use it as gw, instead of the regular connection.
you don't really need a unique wifi for it to work.

13

Very good point, I got caught up in the whole WiFi scenario...could I till use OpenWRT for this purpose or would something like Wireguard be a better option?

14

openwrt is a router OS, wireguard is a VPN implementation.

openwrt supports wireguard :wink:

1 Like
15

Yes, you're spot on! Hmm I've got some thinking to do going forward, thank you for your help and advice! It's really appreciated :+1: