I recently moved to an apartment that offers very fast Wi-Fi to all tenants. It’s a fairly large complex and the Wi-Fi is very fast. That said, I have installed ExpressVPN on my laptop, tablet and phone.
I have a router and have a flashed Linksys router to which I have successfully installed ExpressVPN.
I also have a TP Link Access point set to client mode. I can see the router’s SSID and join. I can even see the TP Link access Point SSID and connect. The TP Link AP seems to connect to the Building’s Wi-Fi without issue, but it’s not allowing the Router to connect to the interent. I’ve tried disabling Express VPN on the router and it still can’t get through. Has anyone had success in setting something like this up?
The only reason I really need it is for my two Sonos speakers. I don’t feel comfortable leaving them on a semi-public Wi-Fi. All other devices have the app based VPN installed.
It’s possible the building’s wireless is detecting a rogue router and it’s being blocked. One way would be to get to the console level of your router to check some “ping” tests even if it has valid IP settings as yours, it could be blocked due to a profile security check.
I have used DD-WRT to share a wifi connection to other devices, both wired and wireless. You did not mention what you flashed the router to. for my setup I use status > wireless Site Survey to find the SSID I need to connect to and select Join. This should set your SSID to the correct name and channel. Once set go to Wireless tab then set Wireless Mode to Client. and then on the wireless security tab set the correct encryption type and passwords if needed. also make sure Setup > Basic Setup “WAN Connection Type” is set to DHCP. make sure DHCP is enabled to allow devices on your network to connect. after applying your router should connect to the wifi network and your WAN IP should now show an IP.
If you have a multi band wifi router you can use the other radio to setup a wireless AP for your network or even connect another router and use that for wifi but make sure you connect the 2 routers on the LAN side to prevent a multi NAT which can cause trouble for some stuff.
Once you have everything working you can then move on to setting up the VPN
You’ll likely get better help if you provide model numbers so people fully understand what you’re working with. One man’s ‘modem’ is another mans ‘modem/router/all-in-one thing’. Ditto telling us exactly what software you’ve flashed onto the Linksys.
This kind of thing is a breeze with OpenWRT, for example. There’s even little travel routers such as those made by GL.inet which run a modified version of OpenWRT and do this out of the box (connec to public wifi and braodcast a secure LAN behind a NAT and firewall). Those even have a little toggle switch on the side of them to turn your VPN on and off.
Just a heads up, you might find Netflix and and other services block your VPN connection (recently discovered this with them and WWE) if so a VPS with wireguard or OpenVPN installed will get around it.
I would consider using something like the netgear AC750. Everything says it is a wifi extender but in reality, it grabs wifi and also spits it out via the side of the “extender”. Now you have a wired ethernet jack where you can plug in a standard router/firewall and live a normal life!
That’s a possibility. I don’t think the AP has NAT capabilities, but I wasn’t even able to get an initial connection on the Router. I’m going to try with different model Linksys this evening.
You may need to try to have your TPLink AP NAT any connections establishing to this TPLink so the uplink connection does not see it as a potential rogue device. Another way to hide your devices beyond your exposed TPLink.
Linksys Routers → TPLink AP (NAT your traffic) → Building AP