Balance 20 vpn from vacation home

I currently have a balance 20 with 2 cable modems. My wife and I work from our home office. We are planning an extended trip and I’d like to be able to take all of our office equipment with us and have the traffic route through our balance 20 at home.

What is the best way for me to do this? Is it possible to buy another peplink device that can connect at a hardware level to the balance 20 at home and have all outgoing traffic go through that connection? I keep seeing videos of a site to site vpn but I dont see that option on my balance 20. It’s on firmware 6.3.

Basically I’d like to get to the vacation home connect the cable modem there to another peplink device and have all the traffic go through my home wan connection

Hi Someoneelse. I do precisely what you ask about. I have a Balance 20 at both locations. (Actually, I have Surf SOHOs at two more locations as well.) The capability to set up a VPN is already there – you are just missing it. On the Balance 20 go to Network | PepVPN and set up a PepVPN Local ID (just pick a short name for each end). Then, establish a Profile. The end that is set to initiate the connection (Remote IP Address) will constantly attempt to do so until the connection is made. If you lose WAN on either end and it comes back up, the VPN will automatically come back to life. A comment that sounds like I am a shill for Peplink [but am not – just a happy user]: Peplink got this absolutely right, in my view. It “just works.”

I use this arrangement to get at equipment behind non-routable IPs at the distant (VPN) location. For example: I can watch our CCTV system at 192.168.88.88 900 miles away from 192.168.3.7. The only thing I have not been able to do is to is print to the distant printer when specifying it by IP address in Windoze. I suspect I have a Microsoft configuration issue totally unrelated to the Balance 20s.

Side note: The Balance 20s are superb devices “for what they are” – The VPN connection is somewhat bandwidth limited, although it has been increased with the most recent firmware update. VPN speed limitations are set forth on the Peplink web site – no surprises. I have not found it to be a problem, but some have really whined about it. (Comment: If I were Peplink I’d think it reasonable to provide additional capabilities for folks who buy higher in their product line – you pay more, you get more.)

Let us know how it goes!

Rick

Thanks for the update. I noticed yesterday I got the pepvpn profile options once I created the local ID. It wasn’t clear to me that I needed to save a local ID before the profiles became available.

Am I reading the soho right that it can USB tether my android and provide ethernet ports, or connect to my android Hotspot and provide ethernet and broadcast a different ssis, or connect to a vacation home wifi and give me ethernet, or connect to a vacation home cable modem/dsl? And with all of those still use the pepvpn back to my main balance 20?

If so that capability sounds amazing.

Thanks

Basically, I think you have it right. So far as I know the SOHO USB port can only be used for devices on the Peplink/Pepwave web site. There are many 3G/4G devices that are compatible and the Company has been very responsive about adding more. What it can do, however, is communicate via wi-fi with a 3G/4G/whatever “hot spot.” I have found the SOHO to be rather sluggish in joining “wi-fi as WAN,” however. I’d certainly rather use the Ethernet port for WAN. However, having said that, I have used both simultaneously and it seems to work as advertised. The sluggishness of which I speak would only be encountered on joining the wi-fi WAN – not thereafter.

Personally? If both the Balance 20 and SOHO meet your needs, I’d go with the Balance. (I own two of the former and three of the latter.)

Thanks.
The home we’re going to is a duplex so I may not have access to the actual router, that being said I’ll need the ability to jump onto the broadcasted ssid at the house and create my own network off of it, in that case the soho is a must yes?

OK. I get it now. Sounds like the SOHO would work fine for that application. The VPN to your home would get you past whatever restrictions the owner of the “wi-fi as WAN” in your rental place has set up and would avoid “double NATing.”

Side note: The SOHO is available with or w/o ext antennas (it has internal antennas and you can decide which you want to use.) I have found situations where they ARE needed and where they are NOT needed – no surprise. YMMV. I have read some really stupid posts on Amazon and on other sellers’ web sites where buyers condemn the product because they felt cheated. I don’t understand that. I think the manufacturer was smart in doing it this way. Why pay for external antennas that are not needed?