Can I find a free VPN that works on my local network?
Can I find a free VPN that works on my local network?
Hi everyone, I have a Visual Foxpro program and it talks to a MySQL server on our local area network (LAN) of 3 computers. Someday, I need to let 5 to 10 more users connect from different places OUTSIDE of the LAN. I dug into this and think I might need a STATIC IP address for my LAN, and anyone outside needs a STATIC IP too? I heard I needed to buy a DOMAIN or a website etc., but I'm wondering... since we don't have any static IPs anywhere in our network but are connecting fine to our MySQL server via the LAN, what if we use VPN to make it look like everyone is still in the same local area network even though some of us are far away? This leads me to questions: 1. Can MySQL be accessed through a VPN network like Hamachi or something? 2. Is there a free VPN for LAN work or do I really have to buy a VPN application for that? Hamachi is free but limited to just 5 computers. Does Windows 10 have built-in VPN features? 3. Is all this possible? Simply setting up a virtual private network to mimic a local area network and get all our users from multiple locations connected to our server in the LAN (VPN)? Or maybe it's just not that easy? I apologize for asking here, but I'm having trouble researching because most results mention VPNs used for browsing anonymously or something. I meant VPNs set up to create a private network for office use. Thanks guys.
You can use hamachi, but it's an older method. It's more common to use openvpn, and maybe hamachi now supports that too. There are other options. Both openvpn and wireguard are free. Technically, hamachi uses a free protocol called IPSEC, so you could run that without paying hamachi. Real vpn works the same way. Your remote device looks like it's on your local lan. If you were a big company, you'd just buy a fancy vpn box. That is how all the remote work from home is being done. When you are small, you probably better off buying a router that supports a vpn server. There are many consumer routers that allow remote access via a vpn server. I don't know how many users there are total. There isn't a hard limit...
You might use Hamachi, but that's an older method. It is more common now to use OpenVPN, though Hamachi might support it too. There are other ways to go. Both OpenVPN and WireGuard are free. Technically, Hamachi uses a free protocol called IPSEC, so you could do that without paying for Hamachi. Real VPNs work exactly like that. Your remote device looks like it's on the local LAN (local area network). If you were a big company, you'd just buy a fancy VPN box. That is how most people today connect from home. When you are small, you probably should just buy a router that has a built-in VPN server. There are many consumer routers that support remote access via a VPN server. I don't know exactly how many of them exist or if there is too many users. There isn't a hard limit; it's mostly about performance in most routers. If you choose this route, you need to research carefully. Otherwise, you can use a small dual-network PC running Linux to build your own VPN server. Most of these systems run OpenVPN or WireGuard protocols. There are free VPN apps for most platforms that let you connect to the router. Now if you really want to do it, many also support IPSEC. But IPSEC is harder to get running through NAT and other networks. OpenVPN and WireGuard can use standard HTTP ports if you want so they work even in places like internet cafes that only allow web surfing. The big problem is you MUST have a public IP on your main location where you install the servers and your VPN router. End users aren't really limited; they should work pretty much anywhere. Now there is a difference between a PUBLIC IP and a STATIC IP. When you don't have a STATIC public IP, the IP can change which means end clients don't know where your router is. This problem can be solved by a very common router feature called DYNDNS. It creates a dummy DNS entry that updates every time your public IP changes so clients use this domain name instead of hardcoding it. DYNDNS used to be free, but they are also very inexpensive even if they charge. A STATIC IP is nice but not really needed since the IP rarely changes anyway—usually only when you reboot the modem most times. Now this does nothing if you have a private IP rather than public. There isn't a good solution for that; you must get a public IP somehow. Your best option is to pay your ISP. Another way to get a public IP is to rent a server from a hosting company, like Amazon or Cloudflare. You would run a VPN server on that cloud server and all your end devices as well as your home office would connect via that server. This server isn't anything special; it's just a Linux box running OpenVPN or WireGuard in most cases. You can set this up yourself or you can pay the hosting company to do it for you. I would do it myself because of security concerns.
Thanks so much! I wrote this very detailed way, and actually tried it with Hamachi last night. It seems to work fine right now. But wait—the same query that took me 8 seconds on my local area network now takes 15 seconds when going through the Hamachi VPN. Is Hamachi slower than other VPNs?
A VPN adds a little extra work for encryption, but it doesn't slow things down by seconds. It only takes a tiny fraction of a second. The speed also depends on how fast you send the data. There is usually a limit to how much total bandwidth you can use before the CPU gets full at 100%. This changes depending on your computer and both ends involved. If you run it from a phone, the performance will be lower than if you run it from a PC, even when doing the server job on a big machine. That is why many consumer routers have limits because their CPUs get too hot or slow for all users at once. In general, the VPN doesn't hurt speed much, but if you send a lot of data back and forth, then it might slow things down just a bit more.