Secure your connection with a personal VPN service.
Secure your connection with a personal VPN service.
I need a VPN solution similar to TailScale to link your laptop outside home to your HP Mini desktop. You have a Synology NAS on your network and a Sophos firewall; you want secure access without relying solely on NordVPN. I’m avoiding VPNs that handle filtering, so you’d connect directly via your own hardware. Your setup involves modem → Sophos firewall → ASUS router → NSA router → HP Mini. You need a path from laptop to VPN client to HP Mini that lets you reach your NAS through the desktop. I’ve tried TailScale but faced issues with connection quality and access control. What alternatives exist for a Windows-to-Windows link with filtered traffic?
You’d like to connect a VPN to your firewall. I’m not familiar with Sophos, but if it functions similarly to pfSense—a firewall or router device—that’s the right place to set it up. After connecting via VPN, you won’t be accessing the NAS through your PC anymore. Instead, you’ll interact with the NAS as though you’re on your local network, even though your internet connection is now the limiting factor. This means slower speeds for traffic, not because of your LAN’s bandwidth, but because the VPN becomes the bottleneck.
Usually you need the IP address since no broadcast traffic goes through a VPN, which is how Windows identifies network devices. Except for that, I’ve usually copied files to my NAS while away from home using regular network shares.
Fascinating. My MacBook functions well with my domain when connected via the WireGuard split tunnel. For SMB access across both Windows and Mac, I rely on IP addresses, which seems to work without problems.
You can reach any domain your router supports easily. The automatic detection fails since the VPN is already behind NAT on its own network. There might be options to route traffic between subnets, but it's best not to send unnecessary broadcast traffic through the VPN—it wastes bandwidth.