Using Win8 Box as Home Network Router

[White Widow]

I currently have a small Win8 Pro box serving as a file storage and plex media server for my home network. I have a paid VPN account Private Internet Access) that I routinely use on one of my machines, but I would like to be able to have all my internet traffic routed over the VPN. Is there a way I can use my Win8 box to do this?

I imagine it would look something like this:

[VPN Service through Verizon Router] --- [Win8 Box with dual NIC] --- [LAN/Wifi Router/Firewall] --- [Multiple home devices]

Is that about right? My concern here is that if I use the Win8 box as a VPN Gateway, my media and centralized storage on that machine are at risk, protected only by the software firewall running on it (BitDefender).

Is there a better way to do this? Should I just setup a DD-WRT router and connect my network to the VPN service using that? Maybe a Virtual Machine on the Win8 box running FreeBSD to act as the VPN bridge/gateway?

Thanks,
A

 

[rekd0514]

pfsense, utangle, or you could use ESXi and create a virtual router using the first 2

That would allow you to do a lot more than just one single task on this PC.

 

[White Widow]

Thanks - I wasn't really familiar with pfsense, and running that in a virtual machine seems like the perfect solution. I am definitely going to play around with that and see how it works.

 

[White Widow]

In case anyone else wants to go down this route:

I ended up using Win8 Pro to run a home file server (and Plex Media Server) with a bunch of disks in a Storage Spaces array. I'm also running the pfSense firewall in an Oracle VirtualBox environment.

I setup pfSesne to operate as an OpenVPN client connected to a commercial VPN provider. This lets me route traffic from specific LAN PCs/devices (or all LAN devices) over the VPN interface. For example, I have all my Roku traffic routed over the VPN - this lets me avoid Verizon's Netflix traffic shaping. The difference is significant.

I also have it setup to route torrent traffic over the VPN - I get much better torrent speeds this way, and if the VPN drops, the firewall rules prevent it from rolling over to the exposed WAN connection.

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with this project and the hardware seems to work very well - with Plex transcoding/streaming a 720p video locally, I can run multiple WAN and VPN data streams on my 25Mbit connection without issue. With everything going full bore, the CPU usage hovers around 80%.

System Specs:

Celeron G1620 2.7GHz
4GB RAM
1 x 120GB SSD
2 x 2TB 7200RPM HD
Intel Pro/1000 Dual-port NIC
Onboard Realtek Gigabit NIC