Two NICs : One for VPN to Internet - One for LAN

[Clocker]

Howdy-
I have a VPN service that I'm trying out. I would like my home server to use the VPN service to connect to the internet though one of the NICs in the machine (for torrenting). I would like the other NIC in the machine to be used for connecting to my LAN. Is this possible? If so, can someone give me some advice on how to set it up (or point me to a good resource)?

The router I am using is an Asus RT-N66U, if that makes any difference.

O/S is Windows 10 Pro. NICs are Intel gigabit.

Thanks!!

 

[Howell]

The magic is in the routing table and the client software should handle that. 2 nics are not strictly necessary.

 

[Stereodude]

Why do you need two NICs? That seems like a headache waiting to happen if the rest of your LAN also needs internet access unless you get two IPs from your internet provider (so the VPN'd NIC can get a public IP directly while your router gets the other public IP). The non-VPN LAN NIC needs to have a different IP range from the VPN NIC. However, your internet router can't sit on two different IP ranges at the same time (AFAIK). Like both 192.168.x.x and 10.x.x.x.

I've connected two machines to each other via 10GbE and also had them both on my 1GbE network for internet and connecting to other machines not on 10GbE, but that works because both machine have two NICs.

Does the VPN software break your local LAN connectivity? Can you even bind the VPN software to a specific NIC?

 

[Clocker]

To be honest, I assumed that once the VPN connection to the internet was established by the server, I would not be able to access the server from my other machines. I thought this would be the case because when I bring my work laptop home and connect to my employer's VPN, I cannot access my local network. So, I thought a work around would be two NICs. But, now that I've tried it, it appears that when my server has the VPN software running, I am still able to access the local shares on it from my other machines. So, I guess I'm all set.

 

[Mercutio]

That's a setting in the DUN properties for your VPN client to use the default gateway on your remote network, but your work probably doesn't want you accessing local resources on work time or the security headache of policing your LAN for issues.

 

[MaxBurn]

We do something similar on occasion. Basically I just leave the gateway blank on the NIC connected to the LAN. Windows seems to pick up that isn't rotatable and uses the other NIC for internet just fine, no additional configuration needed.

 

[Clocker]

The tweaknews VPN client seems to be pretty smart. It let's me securely download torrents at the slow VPN speed but there's no speed limitation when I connect to their newsgroup servers and I can simultaneously download from them at the same time.

 

[timwhit]

I didn't know they have a VPN client, I see nothing on their website. Do you have a link?

 

[Clocker]

http://www.tweaknews.eu/en/landing/v1?target=img_info

By the way, I chose the Netherlands as the VPN location.

 

[timwhit]

Looks like you are paying for that. I'll have to remember that when I resubscribe.