OpenVPN, Tailscale and a travel router-tales of woe

[Bad1Billy]

I posted earlier about my problems; to recap: been running BI flawlessly (thanks to this forum) for a few years with an ASus router and OpenVPN. Have a condo a few hours away with a travel router that I use to access a Chromecast and a Roku to get all the TV stuff that is at home. Been unable to get my camera at the condo added to BI. Used AI to help route it properly but broke the asus router connection. I was able to see the travel router remotely but never the camera. Per AI, I installed Tailscale on the BI computer and the GL.inet travel router. That worked for a few days until suddenly the Roku/CHromecast connections at the condo reverted back to the native ip therefore killing Comcast etc. (still don't know why that happened). Per AI, I have tried installing only Tailscale on the BI computer and travel router but my OpenVPN connections and Tailscale combo are killing my "pipe" (fail to connect. on 2 cameras).

Unfortunately, I like to tinker (and I know enough of networking to get in big trouble) and have gotten "lost" in everything I've done. I reverted to DMSS to get a camera feed from the condo but that is now broken. I'm limping along with BI and OpenVPN only on the home setup (most important) but I have to enable Tailscale to please the wife when she is at the condo (gets her TV shows) which will kill my BI feed.

My thought is that I'll reconfig the travel router back to OpenVPN and do some more research there. I think that was the most stable as it ran fine until I got deep into the settings trying to get the Asus to accept the camera feed. If I can get that stable again, I'll probably revert to DMSS for the condo camera. Obviously would rather have it all on BI but I've spent hours screwing with this to no avail. Interesting that the basic setup of OpenVPN and Tailscale DID work for a week or so until we were at the condo...maybe a brief power outage or similar enabled Roku to sniff the native IP? THAT took a while to resolve after Roku wouldn't reset and finally had to add the travel router as a part of home network...Main router is 192.168."AB".1 and travel router is 192.168."AB". 2

Any thoughts on easing this process would be appreciated...

 

[biggen]

A site-to-site VPN is the simplest solution. The router at you condo (Router A) would connect to the router at your home (router B). You could setup the route at the condo so that all WAN destined traffic is sent to your home (Router B) first and then out to the internet. At your home, your home router (Router B) would send WAN destined traffic to your ISP. Any traffic to the VPN network at the condo would traverse the VPN site-to-site link.

I do this using Peplink routers and their PepVPN solution. I have three Balance 20X routers at three locations: My house, my business, and my fathers house. I can connect to any device at any of those three locations from any of these three locations.

You would have to either have a static IP at one of your locations or use a DDNS solution. The Peplink routers have a DDNS solution built into them as well.

 

[Bad1Billy]

Thanks Biggen, I will try the OpenVPN route again as the Asus router came with OpenVPN client and the GL.iNet can act as a server. I think I need to define a static route on the travel router for the Asus (the remote cam and router both have static IP addresses).