Remote College Admin

My kid is moving into a new place at college(hours away) next year and will need a router in her apartment. Since I have had decent luck with my Soho MK3 I was thinking of getting her one for her place and then just do any administration remotely. I just want things to work and don’t mind paying extra for this. Does anyone have any comments on how hard this will be?

Ken

Take a look at InControl 2. Once you create an account, just add the device into your Incontrol 2 and then you can remote into the device and do any configuration necessary. As long as the device stays in warranty, this feature is included. However, if you decide not to renew the warranty, you can purchase Incontrol 2 separately. That being said, I always opt for renewing the warranty.

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what administration do you need to do remotely?

many ISPs provide routers these days

There are a number of options:

  1. If the router has an addressable IP address then you can enable remote access on the router and access the same user interface from your computer that you would find when accessing via a direct LAN connection.

  2. If the router does not have an addressable IP address then you can set up a FusionHub Solo instance with an IP address (e.g., at vultr or upCloud - $5/month), make a pepVPN connection from it to the router, and connect to the router via the FusionHub. That’s a bit messy, but it works. Or,

  3. as @Calvin1 suggests, and by far the most elegant, make use of the InControl2 (IC2)l freebie that comes with a new router. You can use IC2 to configure the router (and any other peplink devices you might add to the IC2 account), or simply as a way to get remote access directly to a router when the router is not directly IP addressable (IC2 establishes a connection from the router - quite clever). The cost is minimal ($29/year after the first, free year) and the only downside is that your management data exists on peplink servers - you have to trust them.

I’d go with #3.

Cheers,

Z

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It is not true that you need to keep the unit in warranty to have access to it via IC2 though that is what you are led to believe. There is a point of diminishing returns with warranty on an older unit and that is why IC2 is available separately. I’ve been renewing IC2 for clients and my own for devices years.