Split VPN SSID - Need some help

VPN
1

Howdy, I’m looking for a way to have two SSIDs, one of which is not on a Consumer VPN via OpenVPN such as Nord and a second SSID which is not on a VPN and routes traffic as normal.

It appears possible on Asus’s Pro routers but they’re a bit hefty in price. Does anyone know a better way around this?

VPN on my router which is a RT-AX55 absolutely kills my speeds from 500 to about 30. Which is understandable for such a low-end budget router.

Has anyone done something similar? I thought about going down a Proxy server route and buying a seperate SFF PC to handle the VPN processing but just feels like things could get messy going down that road.

I did look at buying a Unifi AP and having the traffic connected to that connected to a VPN but that doesn’t appear to work without a Gateway, again price…

Is a Unifi Dream Router an option for this kind of set-up? I’d also like the option to VLAN / Seperate LAN ports to handle VPN traffic and some not? Has anyone got any other suggestions? Doesn’t need to be Unifi.

2

Something that can run OpenWRT or AsusWRT (if you’re using Asus routers) should be able to do this.

I’ve been able to setup Policy Based Routing on a raspberry pi 4 running OpenWRT to configure certain clients to use the VPN and others to just go through the normal ISP channel.

3

You could cheaply build a pfsense/opnsense box with two vlans, one routed through a VPN. Even a $20 optiplex 3020 i3 will have enough cpu performance to push 500Mbps through a VPN tunnel. You can pick up an intel based dual port PCIe card for another $20. One port for wan, 2nd port into a vlan aware switch (or even directly into something like a Ubiquiti U6+ AP for $120, or equivalent vlan aware AP)