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Can Nighthawk R7000 router hide the IP address using OpenVPN?
Hi all, I recently bought a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 (R7000-100CNS) router with the purpose of using its VPN support to hide my IP address. I configured the VPN on the router and on Windows 10 as in...
Re-read your subject header again "Can Nighthawk R7000 router hide the IP address using OpenVPN?" and post. Are you trying to hide the IP Address that your ISP provider assigns to your DSL/Cable modem, also known as the Public IP Address? If so, the a personal VPN (the VPN server in the Nighthawk) is not what you are looking for. What you need is a commercial VPN, like NordVPN or Express VPN.
Below is two scenario. Which one are you trying to do?
When I travel to foreign countries and U.S. States, like Japan, Korea, California, New York, etc, I use VPN to create a secure tunnel back to my home VPN server (Nighthawk). So, when I "cruise" the internet, websites think I am in the US or in the U.S. State I live in, because my public IP address is pointing to my home cable modem. (very effective when using service providers like Netflix or Amazon Video streaming video to many foreign countries) Also, all my data packets leaving and entering my computer is encrypted, so if someone intercepted my data packets from the hotel hotspot, they would have a heck of a time decrypting data.
If I was at home, in the US, and I wanted to hide my public IP address that is pointing to my home, I would need a different solution. That solution is to connect to a commercial VPN. The website would send the data to the Public IP address of the commerical VPN provider, which could be in another U.S. State or country. The VPN provider would then route the data, through a secure tunnel, back to my computer. If for some reason someone intercepted the data packet prior to arriving to the commercial VPN provider, deconstructed the data packet, the destination IP, would point to the commercial VPN vendor and not to my home.
Hi Deros,
Thank you very much for your clear explanation.
The two scenarios you mentioned are in my mind, but hiding my public IP address is my first target.
Do you think hiding a public IP address will work on routers with NordVPN or ExpressVPN support without monthly payment for theses services? Or you meant I have to pay to use these commercial services? In this case, I have to register and pay for each device I use to connect to the internet. I want to use a router because I was told that a router can cover the entire home.
Thanks again.
Here is a quick premier on Networking.
There is two side of a network. The public side and the private side. The public side has a IP Address that is given by the Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you google "Whats my IP Address" you will get your public side IP Address. This is the IP Address everybody in the internet can find out if they capture a data packet. The public IP Address can change but I been assigned the same one for many years. If someone had the ability to capture a data packet in the internet, the only thing they can find out about that IP Address is what company owns it. i.e Spectrum, Optima, Cox, etc... It is almost impossible to find out what your computers IP Address is. Which comes to the private network, which is created by the Nighthawk using industry standard private IP address. The most common IP address scheme is 192.168.X.X. The second is 10.X.X.X. The X being a number between 0-255.
So back to your question about "hiding your IP Address". If your purpose is to hide your private IP address, then don't worry about it. It is already hidden from people in the public side. (This is barring any trojan horse or bots on your computer). (Note: you did not need to buy a router with VPN. All wireless routers hide private ip address by design.) If you want to hide your public IP address, then you may want to use a commercial VPN. However, you are right, that commercial VPN only hides one device, normaly a computer. I don't think you need to buy an account for each computer unless you are using multiple computers at the same time. i.e. your computer and your significant others computer.
If you don't want to pay for a commercial VPN, you can google Tor Browswer. It is a special browser that uses proxy server to anomize your public IP Address. It similiar to a VPN but you will be connecting to proxy servers using a special configured web browser. The proxy servers are owned by whoever decided to build one and add it to the Tor network. Since your data is not encrypted when it arrives at the proxy server, the owner would have free reign to your data. I heard it is self governing network but I still would not trust it. I don't trust commerical VPN but at least they have a business reason not to play with customer data or to give it up so easily to law enforcement.
This is something I would not attempt to do, even though I have the abilty, because there is too many things that can go wrong, wasting massive amount of time and money (advance networking): To hide multiple devices, i.e. everything in your home, then you will need to create a point to point VPN. You would have to build linux proxy box. The linux box will have two lan ports and running OpenVPN. One lan port connects to your ISP, the other lan port to your wireless Nighthawk. The linux box creates a VPN tunnel between itself and your Commercial VPN provider. You would configure the Nighthawk to route data to the linux box and configure the linux box to route data through the VPN tunnel.
Last note. If you are afraid of "identity theft" or "hacking' don't worry about hiding your IP Address. Determined hackers don't need your IP Address. They have other methods of finding out who you are. If you hiding from big brother, I wouldn't worry unless you are doing something really illegal and they have other methods of tracking you down.
Hope this help and good luck.