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corbywan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 4, 2008
238
3
Forest Grove, OR
Current setup
Our church meets in a school building. The district has been nice enough to let us access their network so we can have internet access. However, it is so firewalled that we really only have web/port80 access.

At out storefront we office have SLS with VPN server running on a 25/25 FiOS internet connection. While at the school I can use a MacBook to connect to the SLS VPN (so those ports must be open) and I can configure the laptop to send all traffic over the VPN which gives us virtually wide open internet access through my office network. That's nice if just that one device wants wide open internet access.

The problem is that we have a handful of devices (Mac and PC, iPhones, etc) that our church uses on any given Sunday and they all require internet access with most standard ports which are blocked by the school. I would like to connect them through the office network to the internet like the MacBook.

The Question
I don't have a ton of experience with VPNs so bear with me. The SLS VPN server allows individual users to connect in, yes? If that's the case my idea might not work. I was hoping to get an off-the-shelf VPN router from someplace like OfficeDepot, use it to make a bridge of sorts (not an actual network bridge of course) and have all my devices connect through it to my SLS VPN office network and then out to the internet.

Essentially I want to create a network at the school and connect it to the office network through the VPN over the school's network. Can this be done, or do I need a VPN router on each end to "bridge" the two networks?

Thanks in advance.
 

Matty-p

macrumors regular
Apr 3, 2010
170
0
could be done but how fast is your office network (to the internet) as it will probably crawl with 20+ users all using the internet and vpn in ect also what about security especially if you go the hardware vpn router
 

mh530

macrumors newbie
Oct 14, 2010
6
0
Just a wild thought, but would Internet Connection Sharing on the Mac Book work for this? It's free so it's probably worth a try. You may have to manually address the other devices though.

Just tried setting it up, my iMac will let me share the VPN I have setup (as a client) to Airport or ethernet, so it should work. I don't have any other devices to test it right now. You might need to provide a DHCP server at the school to ensure your client devices are configured correctly, or manually set IP address and gateway/DNS on them
 
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