My country has Reddit blocked. I have to connect to a VPN service each time I want to get on Reddit. But doing this makes other websites very slow. Is there a way I can set up a system that
You can always use vpn in browser, you have one eg. Firefox with VPN to browse Reddit nad use Chrome for everything else.
What networking kit do you have? ISP supplied gateway/router or some of your own kit? You can do this with pfsense or even ubiquiti equipment fairly easily using routing tables but on ISP kit it’s a bit trickier to achieve, unless you have a pc on permanently? If that’s the case then you could run a VM but would increase complexity and points of failure for you.
You can achieve this by changing the DNS address of your router (entire network) or in each device you use. You can use any public DNS (google, openDNS, Adguard,…)
It doesn’t mess with the ability to use a VPN When you want.
That’s how I do it on my desktop. But on mobile I like the reddit app and it requires an additional vpn app which is extremely irritating.
I’m not very well versed in networking terminology so I’ll try to describe my setup in simple words. Pardon the simplicity. Optical fibre (black hard thick cable) comes into my home from the ISP. That goes into an optical fibre terminal joint box (a black box that the black cable goes into. The ISP guys call this TJ box). Out of this box comes fibre optic patch cord (a yellow and very thin and flexible cable). This goes into an ONU device. Out of this device comes Ethernet cable and goes into a modem-router-wireless access point-combo. From here 1 Ethernet cables run to desktop and wireless devices connect over wifi.
This is the setup. Now the ISP owns the TJ box and the ONU device. I own the Modem-Router-WAP combo.
Please give suggestions. I hope I managed to describe the setup okay.
Where would I get an openvpn profile that is outside of my country? Openvpn server can be set up on my router, but it would still be inside my country. So it would not bypass countrywide restrictions.
I changed to OpenDNS but still cannot browse reddit without a vpn. OpenDNS test shows okay. But reddit does not load without vpn.
Got it, what make/model is the modem/router/wap combo?
Here you can take a look at datasheet, user manual and other stuff for it: Download for Archer C6 | TP-Link
Ok so that doesn’t support having a VPN client (without modification of firmware to something like OpenWRT). Do you have an always-on PC?
Umm… The user manual says it does support VPN server. Please see chapter 12
Yes it supports VPN server but you need client…
Right. Now I understand. Then is there any other way? I just have a normal desktop but it doesn’t run always. How about Raspberry pi? Will that work?
Yep that should work. I’m sure there’s projects for using a pi as a router with VPN. I’ll take a look and let you know what I find.
This is a good starting point: https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/raspberry-pi-vpn-gateway,6103.html
You’ll need to add routes for the services you want to go via the VPN but this should work. And don’t forget to change the “router” entry on your DHCP on your existing tp-link once done.
So the idea is that the pi would run a vpn client all the time which would be connected to a vpn server somewhere on the internet. The pi would be configured as the gateway. So when I send a request, the information would pass from the device through the pi to the vpn server and back from the vpn server through the pi to the device. Is this right?
But won’t this make all the internet traffic pass through the vpn? Or can the pi be configured to only route reddit traffic through the vpn and let other stuff bypass the vpn?
That’s the idea and yes I’d configure the pi to only route reddit/anything else you need via vpn for performance reasons.