forcing VPN to use a certain NIC

[OVerLoRDI]

Running W7 pro, I have 3 NICs and 2 net connections coming into my computer. I am hoping to join a 3rd network via VPN for lan gaming and file sharing, but when the VPN link is established it does so through my primary NIC/net connection (as assigned by advanced settings under network connections in CP) and so all my internet traffic is sent through this VPN connection.

I want to be connected via VPN (or another bridging protocol) to this remote network, but have all my internet traffic be handled directly through my local net connections. Is this possible?

My thought was that there might be a way to tell a VPN connection which NIC to use, and thus I could assign it to my 2nd or 3rd NIC, and then maintain the priority of where internet data goes through W7's advanced settings tab under network connections.

The other options appears to be creating a virtual NIC of some kind that windows doesn't see as a VPN connection. Apparently Cisco has a driver like this but it claims to be incompatible with non cisco vpn servers. My vpn server is a DD-WRT Linksys box.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Hamachi sort of does what I need it to do, but not quite. It creates a virtual NIC in windows, but Hamachi does not use a standard VPN setup and I can't point the connection at the remote router.

 

[Nothinman]

Windows doesn't do very well multi-homed, but you should be able to do what you want with basic routing as long as the tunnel allows the client to do split-tunneling.

On Linux the syntax would be: 'route add -host x.x.x.x dev ethX' to add the host route for the VPN control traffic and then 'route add -net y.y.y.y netmask z.z.z.z dev tunX' to add a specific route for the remote lan out the tunnel interface.

The Windows route syntax should be similar, but I'm sure it won't be exactly the same.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I managed to get it setup in a way that is almost what I want. If you go under IPv4 properties for the VPN connection, then click advanced, you can untick use default gateway on remote network. This option seems to make your locally generated internet traffic go out your net connection directly rather than go through the VPN.

Now I need to find a way to send my VPN connection through a particular NIC. It is currently default to my DSL connection which is my primary, but I would like to send VPN traffic through my cable connection since it is higher bandwidth and used for servers and seeding and keep my DSL connection clear for gaming and browsing.

The connection also seems to timeout after a bit, which I do not want... I'll have to look into the server settings.