Following. I for one am interested, but I have a fairly extensive Ubiquiti setup that at this point would be pretty hard to swap out and the learning curve!!! Makes my head spin. However, I wonder if this exact same think came be accomplished on Ubiquiti? Edit: Looks like Ubiquiti doesn't support Open VPN directly, but there is a work around. This is a little old, so I'll have to see if not a more updated approach. https://community.ui.com/questions/...ep-Guide/2a12e083-03fe-47de-be21-36e7cbba6ccb
I like the VPN idea as its one stop shopping so to speak. If the boat is like the house, I'll have 20 apps on my phone with info spread out all over the place. Its nice to have a connected house, but all these piddly apps are driving me crazy.
@dtfeld Dave, you can setup an OpenVPN server for free on an old laptop or such and then you would just need a router (like the ASUS AX1800) that supports OpenVPN. Not ideal but that's how I had things working in the beginning. The linux "Access Server" image is what they call it. Open VPN is only one way of using a VPN, it is the easiest as they also have clients and allow two free connections from clients. This works out perfectly since the boat can stay connected and your cell phone can connect to your house to access the boat when your not at home. I have a PC on the boat that can start up via WOL (wake on lan). And can configure things from home very easily. The only two apps I use for the boat is N2KView and the Foscam camera app which also double for the house as well. Any other app access can be done from the boat PC. I guess there is a third, the Peplink InControl app but that is remote access as well and now that annual sub can possibly be canceled as well. If you've never setup a VPN before or understand the tech behind it, it can be a bit daunting to get a hold of. But here is the basic's https://openvpn.net/access-server/ OpenVPN is a stand alone technology that isn't necessarily needed. VPN routers like ASUS can do point to point on there own and take a lot of the setup out of the equation.
Only through WAN/OpenVPN license. It supports IPSec natively which is basically L2TP for network to network. This would work fine and is one of the underlying protocols for OpenVPN. https://forum.peplink.com/t/introducing-the-openvpn-wan-license!/30392/ I have had enough of needing licenses that need to be renewed and subscriptions for things that should be a feature set of the equipment. I don't use the Peplink as my inside router and have the access point turned off. I had too many issues with their AP enabled. Right now the Peplink is only used for failover and firewall and is the perfect thing for that. It is a great router, so I guess you could use an AP off of that. But I use an ASUS AX1800 on the boat and is better suited for my use. The peplink can be used by itself just fine however. I just couldn't get a couple of devices connected to the AP so I switched to an Linksys EA4500 which worked great. I used the 4500 because it was Maretron's preferred router. Later on I switched to the ASUS because it has many more features like supporting VPN's both server and client. I also use one at the house.
Going to have to think this through. I definitely cant start monkeying with the live network in the house, wife depends on it for work. But I do have a little PC onboard I use as a Plex server. It would be nice to consolidate the libraries. One other thought I had was to switch out to a RPi for the onboard computer, a PC is a little overkill. The other place to run the OpenVPN server would be in a container on my NAS...
I think I may explore the Peplink option here. $20 seems reasonable (I believe its a one time expense), and the new MAX BR1 5G has been much faster and reliable than the older MAX BR1 Mk2 I had (and it was pretty reliable...just not very "fast"). I'm assuming this would give me access to every thing "behind the Peplink?
I have the R-Pi on the boat setup for a few things including plex. But I still need a PC from time to time for N2KAnalyzer and Actisense tools etc. I got tired of moving the laptop around. I put one of those tiny pc's on the boat not much bigger then the r-pi. To your point, most NAS boxes will run OpenVPN, I have a Synology which does. You should check if yours has an app for that. Great idea. I initially put up a VM with the OpenVPN Access Server running in it. I have server in the house setup for my wife and her employee's to access remotely as well. So that was a no brainer.
That is definitely the way to go for you. As we discussed I could never get my AP working right. Glad you have yours the way you like it. I didn't even look to see what the license cost and just assumed it was another $100 deal. For twenty bucks it's a no brainer for sure. And yes everything behind the PL would be accusable, might have to port forward some things but all is accessible. I use MobaXterm for SSH terminal and VNC for GUI on the r-pi, works great.
