I recently retired my Draytek 2830 following a serious security flaw I discovered (that’s another post, stay tuned!) and took the plunge with a rather impressive looking Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite.
The other option was a rack mountable TP-Link TL-ER6020 although the maximum NAT throughput was only 180Mbps and it only had 128MB DDR2 memory and no clear CPU specs, also the web interface looked tired and very restricted. Pound for pound the EdgeRouter was cheaper and has a better spec of anywhere up to and over 600Mbps, 512MB DDR2 memory and Dual‑Core 500 MHz, although it wasn’t rack mountable it was a no brainer with its modern web interface, also did I mention it can process 1 million packets per second?
The EdgeRouter also appeals to my inner nerd (you can no doubt tell) as you can program it via web interface, command line or console connection and you can remove features you don’t need to boost performance. For example, it may only have 3 gigabit ports, but you can do whatever you like with them! In my case I have it configured as 1 WAN port and the other 2 ports are linked to two seperate LAN’s. I will write a full review when I get chance, but for now just take my word that it is the best router I have ever owned.
Anyway, to business!
Home Network
As before with the Draytek guide my home network is still double NAT’d but there isn’t a speed issue anymore. I do plan to eventually run everything via the EdgeRouter but first I need to install a few additional access points (I’m thinking a couple of airGateway-LR’s hidden in roof spaces will do, powered by PoE obviously!).
In the example below the home network subnet will be 192.168.100.x
and WAN address will be 1.2.3.4
Remote Network
The remote network is the same as before too – a pfSense machine sits at x.1 and deals with traffic to the local network.
In the example below the remote subnet will be 192.168.150.x and WAN address will be 5.6.7.8
Important
- Each local area network must be on a seperate subnet, otherwise things can quickly get messy and conflict!
- Make sure you use a secure pre-shared key, anything above 32 characters will do nicely and under no circumstances use the example key!
- The example details below are fake, replace them with your own details if you want this to work
Configuring pfSense
The guide below lists only the parts you need to change, if the option isn’t listed then leave it as is. Anything to do with double NATing is in red, ignore this if your router is WAN facing.
Fairly straight forward, go to VPN > IPSec > Click Add P1
- Enter the Remote Gateway as the WAN IP address of the EdgeRouter (or the Superhub in my case) – 1.2.3.4
- Enter a brieft description in the Description box – VPN to pfSense LAN
- Select Peer identifer as KeyID tag then enter the WAN address of EdgeRouter (192.168.100.1) else leave as Peer IP address
- Enter your pre-shared key in the Pre-Shared Key box – testing123
- Set the DH Group to 14
- Press Save
That’s your Phase 1 entry configured, now for Phase 2:
Go to VPN > IPSec > Click on Show Phase 2 Entries for Home
- Enter Remote Network as the home network subnet – 192.168.100.0/24
- Put a brief description in the Description box – Home
- Set PSF Key Group to 14
- Press Save and then hit Apply Changes
Finally, we need to create a firewall rule to allow traffic to pass over the VPN:
- Go to Firewall > Rules > IPSec and click Add
- Change Protocol to any
- Enter a brief description in the Description box – Allow VPN Traffic
- Press Save any hit Apply Changes
Configuring the EdgeRouter
First of all make sure you are running the latest firmware otherwise options may be missing and this may not go smoothly! Currently (March 2017) I’m running EdgeRouter Lite v1.9.1.
Configuring the EdgeRouter is pretty straight forward, you don’t need to do anything via command line or console (unless you really want to, knock yourself out!) – Go to VPN > IPSec Site-to-Site
- First tick the box Show advanced options to show the encryption options
- Under Global Options leave Automatically open firewall and exclude from NAT unless you want greater control over who can connect in
- Under Site-to-site peers enter the Peer as the home WAN address – 5.6.7.8
- Put a brief description in the Description box – Remote
- In local IP enter any
- For Encryption set AES-256
- In Pre-shared secret enter the key set previously – testing123
- Enter the Local subnet as 192.168.100.0/24
- Enter the Remote subnet as 192.168.150.0/24
Once everything is saved, head over to the pfSense IPSec Status page and hit connect if it hasn’t already established and there you have it!
At this point you may be asking why did you uncheck the option to Automatically open firewall…, this is because I like to have greater control over what IP addresses are allowed access to my network.
To substitute this option I created a rule in the NAT section translating UDP port 4500 to the routers local IP address (192.168.100.1). In turn I set the Src Address Group of this rule to a list of predefined IP addresses, thus only allowing access to my networks and blocking the rest of the world.