Using freenas with transmission remotely

[logscool]

In a couple weeks I will be moving away to school. I currently have a freenas box setup that I use as a networked drive to backup two computers on the local network.

I will be taking one of the computers with me as well as a new one. I would like to continue to use the freenas box to backup all three of these including the computer which will continue to be on the local network of the freenas box.

Also I would like to be able to control the transmission plugin and access the torrents I download remotely. Is there anyway to do all of this?

 

[pirateghost]

I would look at setting up a VPN in your network to connect to. You will not want to open all the ports required for what you are asking

 

[logscool]

Ok cool. I was kind of thinking something along those lines. What would be the easiest way for me to create a VPN? Also is this going to require another computer to act as the VPN server?

 

[pirateghost]

I have read that you can get an OpenVPN server setup on the FreeNAS, but I have no experience with that. have a look around the forums, there are tutorials

 

[Krutet]

I've setup my router as a VPN service and it worked great from outside my network the one time I used it, I was able to connect to my freenas box and all.. I'm using Asus rt n66u router or what it is called.

 

[logscool]

Would it be better to run the VPN from my router (WRT54G v4) or from the freenas box?

 

[pirateghost]

Wrt

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[Krutet]

Would it be better to run the VPN from my router (WRT54G v4) or from the freenas box?

If you can set it up in the router I think that would be more convenient but Im nothing near an expert at the subject..

 

[pirateghost]

Putting the VPN functionality on the edge device is the easiest and preferred option. It requires no port forwards and you don't have to worry about your server going offline or getting hung up and unable to connect. Typically the router is going to have a better uptime anyway.
I run my open VPN on my routers

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[BrianJM]

The only downside to setting up an OpenVPN client on the router is that the throughput is going to be limited by the CPU. I can get about 1.5 MB/s down from my Asus RT-N66U with 90%+ CPU being utilized by the OpenVPN client. I am a little concerned about running the outer CPU near 100% for long periods of time, but I don't have any numbers/stats to backup how this may impact the longevity of the router.

 

[pirateghost]

The only downside to setting up an OpenVPN client on the router is that the throughput is going to be limited by the CPU. I can get about 1.5 MB/s down from my Asus RT-N66U with 90%+ CPU being utilized by the OpenVPN client. I am a little concerned about running the outer CPU near 100% for long periods of time, but I don't have any numbers/stats to backup how this may impact the longevity of the router.

I never took this into consideration because I haven't used a consumer router in years. My current router is a zenshell VM with an Astaro filtering in transparent bridge mode behind it. Plenty of horsepower there. Didn't think about CPU utilization of consumer routers.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[gpsguy]

Ahh, another Astaro user.

... with an Astaro filtering in transparent bridge mode behind it.

 

[pirateghost]

Ahh, another Astaro user.

Yes sir. I have tried everything and nothing works as well as Astaro

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[cyberjock]

I use pfsense for my router.. and with my Intel Atom I have benchmarked more than 150Mb/sec over VPN and around 300Mb/sec for total throughput for my router. So I'm happy because I'll probably want newer hardware before I hit those speeds on my ISP.

 

[Setius]

pfSense FTW

But for your home router, look into DD-WRT/Tomato firmware. Be careful though, you could turn it into a brick fairly easy.

 

[ndboost]

i have a DIR-825N with DD-WRT.. using pptp vpn on the router itself to get access to my nas, raspberry pi, sprinkler system, hell anything thats on my network really.

The only issue i've discovered so far is Itunes doesnt pickup the firefly server when im over vpn.