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siva992's avatar
siva992
Follower
May 11, 2020

VPN clients not on same network

Hi all!

 

I am fascinated by what VPN can do so I had it set up at home on my RBK53 and everything is working just fine.

 

All devices at home are connected to a 192.168.1.xxx

 

But when my computer at work connects to my home VPN server, it connects to a 192.168.2.xxx network. Therefore, I am unable to connect to my home printer as well for example.

 

Is there a way for my VPN clients to be connected to that same 192.168.1.xxx?

 

Thanks in advance!

1 Reply

  • CrimpOn's avatar
    CrimpOn
    Guru - Experienced User
    May 11, 2020
    siva992 wrote:

    All devices at home are connected to a 192.168.1.xxx

    But when my computer at work connects to my home VPN server, it connects to a 192.168.2.xxx network. Therefore, I am unable to connect to my home printer as well for example.

    This is the way Orbi's VPN is designed.  Devices get IP addresses in the 2.x subnet, but the Orbi has a "route" between 1.x and 2.x.

    There are ways to verify this, such as:

     

    • Ping a device on the 1.x subnet that responds to ping.  I kept saying, "it doesn't work", when I was trying to ping a Windows computer that was set to ignore ping requests.  I just connected to my Orbi VPN and was able to ping my printer.
    • Connect to a web page.  I have three web servers on my network, the two Orbi web interfaces (router and satellite) and my Pi-hole DNS server.  A web browser on my laptop connected via VPN opens all three.

    Printing is more complicated because of the interaction between the printer driver and the network.  My laptop said, "the printer is not there", but when I told it to search for network printers the laptop found it.  I hit some snags actually printing which may have been a result of using the wrong printer driver.  Frankly, I have little interest in printing to my home printer when I am not in the house to (a) see if there is paper in the printer and (b) take the printing out of the printer.

     

    So, (1) VPN devices being in subnet 2.x does not stop them from accessing subnet 1.x, and (2) printing is complicated and would take more effort to solve than I want to devote.