VPN on router

My experience,

I use pfSense on my router, any VPN is set up on the router. Not at straight forward as logging in, you need to get the setup information from the VPN provider for the server you wish to use in the country you want. Once set up you then need to route internet traffic through the VPN tunnel, this can be all traffic or from specific local IP addresses.

I can comment on routers provided by your ISP or 3rd party routers from the likes of ASUS.

I suppose the first question has to be "why?"  What are you trying to achieve which requires every device on your network to appear to be in various specific countries?

If you're trying to circumvent geo-locking on something like a TV, I'd be tempted to add a pocket router into the mix and throw OpenWRT on it rather than cock about with the primary router and have all your network traffic going halfway round the world.

Surfshark will do what you require.

I did what Cougar suggested and it worked for a short while but BBC, ITV and Sky are getting pretty good at spotting this now and soom clamp down. It worked for about 6 months though.

(This was using a private VPN I had set up in the UK on a Draytek)

I did what Cougar suggested and it worked for a short while but BBC, ITV and Sky are getting pretty good at spotting this now and soom clamp down. It worked for about 6 months though.

If you're looking at this primarily for geoblocked content, some services offer a DNS-based service that routes some (but not all) traffic through a UK (or wherever) address. It involves less finicking than VPN on the router, and should be a bit faster too

Thanks for the replies. The "why?" is that I want to test connections from a laptop to a server and simulate the laptop being in different countries.

The laptop is locked down so I cannot install a VPN client on it and would not want to as it would not be testing the functionality I am trying to replicate.

I have looked at SurfShark's guide to setting up routers - thanks oceanskipper - and think that it might do what I need it to.

My TP_link home router supports OpenVPN so I will give it a shot.

Thanks all

I do this on occasion, I found the simplest solution was a VPN on my phone (windscribe) and then just use the phone as hotspot connect the laptop.

Thanks mrchrispy - I will give that a go too.

I went to sign up for Surfshark and found that Quidco currently have a 135% cashback deal! - valid for the next two days.

Not sure how that makes commercial sense.

So I have tested this with my TP_Link ER605 router and it seems to work very well.

I can set up multiple VPN profiles on the router and turn them on/off to get an IP address in the desired country very easily. It takes around 15 seconds for the VPN to connect and start using the new IP address.

All easily managed via TP-Link's Omada cloud controller service. Throughput isn't fantastic but it is a £45 router and is more than enough for the testing I need to undertake.

I did need to upgrade the router firmware to get it working.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.