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I currently live in Brazil, but I use VPN to access some US-only services. I don't want to use my computer for that since it forces me to route the connection on my Apple TV, XBox through my Mac, which is not the best use case for me.

So, here is what I thought of doing.

A - connect my simple router (Edimax 3g/6200) to my ISP and make it serve a wireless network called "mynetwork-brazil".

B - connect a second router (WRT54G with DD WRT), plug it's Internet Port on one of the ports of Router A and configure it to make the OpenVPN connection to StrongVPN. This should create a new wireless network called "mynetwork-usa".

This way, I can connect different devices to different networks depending on my need to use VPN.

Here is where I got so far:

Router A is completely configured and works as I expect. Router B is already configured for OpenVPN, but I can't make it route the internet traffic through router A. Seems like I can't get them on the same network.

Router A is configured to be IP and is a DHCP server assigning IPs from .2 to .99

Router B is configured to be IP and use gateway It is also a DHCP server assigning IPs from to

When I connect devices to Router B, they can't see any computer or device on Router A. They can't even ping Router A directly.

I am clearly missing something in order to link the 2 networks? Can anyone help?

Thanks, Luis

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1 Answer

There's a pretty comprehensive set of OpenVPN setup instructions on the DD WRT Site which should help you get started

The main trick for your DD WRT box will be to have the traffic by default flow out over the VPN. What you'll probably want to do is to define a static route to the outside address of your US VPN end point, via your regular router. Then, set the default route of your DD WRT box to be via the inside address of the US VPN. Your DD WRT box will then send all traffic down the VPN, except for traffic destined for the local lan, or traffic destined for the encrypted end of the VPN. You need the static route for the outside address of the VPN so that the VPN traffic knows how to get out!

Your setup would be something like:

     |       Router A             |
     | default route via internet |
          ( *dhcp server on this interface*
    |              |           |
(wireless)      (wired)        |
                     |      Router B         | (vpn interface) 
                     | default route via vpn |
                     | static route to vpn endpoint |
                          ( *dhcp server on this interface)
                |                 |
            (wireless)         (wired)
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I got the Open VPN instructions from StrongVPN and they seem to be implemented correctly on the router. I just can't get those routers to be on the same network. I edited the question to show much more details. Appreciate if you could take another look. –  Luis Novo Jul 9 '11 at 20:52
You need to get Router B to do NAT on outbound connections, and it should really be on a different subnet for it's inside. You also probably don't want it to use router A as the default route, otherwise things won't go over the VPN, see my answer for what you need instead –  Gagravarr Jul 9 '11 at 21:14
Ok, I got everything to work and the only think I am missing now is the ability to configure the NAT to route all traffic through the VPN on the DD WRT router. Any pointer? –  Luis Novo Jul 10 '11 at 22:24
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