From the other comments, I am not sure if they understood my question or maybe they are assuming I know how VPNs normally work; could I just run the VPN on any PC on the network and it works for the whole network, or does the service need to run on the device itself? Because I can’t do anything directly with my ISP managed router and my personal router is too old go support my gaming setup (it doesn’t have WiFi 6 or 5GHz and I do VR).
I’ve never used a VPN before, so I really don’t know. 😅
No. Well, you could, but it would be super complicated. You’d need a wired connection from the Switch to your PC and know how to configure a network bridge (kind of like putting a phone into hotspot mode), and your PC would need to be up (not sleeping) for it to work at all. You could do the same with a Raspberry Pi and a WiFi dongle, but again, you’d need to know how to configure it.
It would be much simpler to buy a decent router to put in front of your ISP router, or replace it altogether (you probably can, but I’d need to know more about your ISP to say for sure). I use a Mikrotik router without WiFi and a separate WiFi access point, and the Mikrotik router supports setting up a VPN. They’re not all that expensive (maybe $100), though they can be a bit daunting to configure because they have a million features. Basically, it takes all traffic from connected devices and tunnels it through the VPN, so that computers aren’t aware that it’s connected to a VPN.
Basically, a VPN sends traffic over an encrypted channel somewhere else, kind of like a digital ethermet cable. Most applications aren’t aware of it at all, and the VPN connection is only available on that computer. The only way to share a VPN connection is to connect the device to a machine with the VPN configured and tell that computer to send all traffic from that connection to the VPN.
I hope that makes sense, I’m happy to answer any questions.
From the other comments, I am not sure if they understood my question or maybe they are assuming I know how VPNs normally work; could I just run the VPN on any PC on the network and it works for the whole network, or does the service need to run on the device itself? Because I can’t do anything directly with my ISP managed router and my personal router is too old go support my gaming setup (it doesn’t have WiFi 6 or 5GHz and I do VR).
I’ve never used a VPN before, so I really don’t know. 😅
No. Well, you could, but it would be super complicated. You’d need a wired connection from the Switch to your PC and know how to configure a network bridge (kind of like putting a phone into hotspot mode), and your PC would need to be up (not sleeping) for it to work at all. You could do the same with a Raspberry Pi and a WiFi dongle, but again, you’d need to know how to configure it.
It would be much simpler to buy a decent router to put in front of your ISP router, or replace it altogether (you probably can, but I’d need to know more about your ISP to say for sure). I use a Mikrotik router without WiFi and a separate WiFi access point, and the Mikrotik router supports setting up a VPN. They’re not all that expensive (maybe $100), though they can be a bit daunting to configure because they have a million features. Basically, it takes all traffic from connected devices and tunnels it through the VPN, so that computers aren’t aware that it’s connected to a VPN.
Basically, a VPN sends traffic over an encrypted channel somewhere else, kind of like a digital ethermet cable. Most applications aren’t aware of it at all, and the VPN connection is only available on that computer. The only way to share a VPN connection is to connect the device to a machine with the VPN configured and tell that computer to send all traffic from that connection to the VPN.
I hope that makes sense, I’m happy to answer any questions.
I actually would know how to bridge the connection between the devices so that would be my choice, as it is the cheapest option.