VPN server at home or travel router?

[pullman]

Hello everyone

At home I'm using an AirPort Extreme connected via ethernet to our ISP's router. The devices at home include a few Mac Pros and MacBooks and an Apple TV 4K, plus iPhones of course.

I regularly travel and have to connect to public wifi and have so far used Nord VPN. That has worked ok but I'm looking into a better and safer solution.

As I understand it, that would be either running a VPN server at home and then use a VPN client on my devices (MacBooks and iPhone) OR a travel router, or possibly a combination of both.

Would someone be able to help me with the + and – of these options in light of my home network setup?

Thank you in advance
Philip

 

[Bigwaff]

I'm looking into a better and safer solution.

Are you wanting to access your home Macs remotely? For what purpose? In your perspective, why would running a VPN server at home be better and safer?

 

[Marco Klobas]

If you need to connect remotely to your home via VPN you can consider Tailscale.

You can set a Mac as an exit node meaning that remotely connected devices will exit on internet through it. It's quite easy to deploy and works on iPhone/iPad/Mac /Apple TV.

 

[pullman]

Thank you both for replying. I am currently running ZeroTier for remote access, having tried Tailscale which did not work for my setup as I have an older Mac with El Cap.

As I mentioned above I am trying to find out the benefits and advantages of different options.

 

[diamond.g]

UniFi Travel Router - Ubiquiti Store

An ultra-slim travel router that instantly extends your UniFi Network wherever you are, bringing secure, familiar connectivity to remote locations.

store.ui.com

This device seems to be pretty popular. I have one, but haven't had the chance to use it officially.

 

[Marco Klobas]

The pros of having a personal VPN is that it's self managed without relying on third party services – well, partially, in the case of Tailscale because there's still a Remote device -> Tailscale -> Home computer triangulation. You get my point.

The cons are that the home computer accepting a VPN connection needs to be on potentially night and day and the home network bandwidth is affected by the in/out traffic (how much, it depends of the usage).

In the case of a full third party VPN solution the pros/cons are opposite: relying on other's services means you have to trust them (con) and they take care of the service's maintenance (pro).

If your need is only to protect the remote connection (no need to access local resources far away from home) then a regular VPN is more practical than having it self hosted. Just choose a serious VPN provider (no free stuff). I have no experience with Nord VPN – it seems legit enough to me. Personally I use Proton and still use Tailscale alongside for some local access needs.

 

[BigBlur]

A travel router just puts your devices behind another router. It, by itself, does not really offer much additional protection. Your traffic is still flowing on their network. You would still need to figure out a VPN solution if that's what you're looking for, but you could do that at the travel router level so that any devices that connect to it automatically go through the VPN.

A travel router is useful if you travel with a lot of devices that need to connect to the internet. Instead of having to connect many devices to a hotel network, you can just connect the travel router once and all your devices will automatically connect to the travel router.

Another reason for having a travel router is if you frequently connect to public networks that charge per device. You can connect the router and share with your devices. Some places are cracking down on this though, like cruise ships.

A potential downside with a travel router is that your internet/bandwidth may be slower than if each device connected directly to the public network. Public networks often allocate a certain amount of bandwidth per device. Say a public network allocates 5 Mbps per device. With a travel router, all devices that connect to it would be sharing that 5 Mbps bandwidth. If each device connected directly to the public network, then they each would get the full 5 Mbps.