TL-R605 VPN capabilities
Hi,
I'm hoping this will appear in google so no one makes the same mistake I did and wastes their time looking into VPN solutions with this device. I was hoping to use this to put my whole home network through a VPN using ExpressVPN, NordVPN or MullVad. TL;DR you can't.
I bought this TL-R605 as it was marketed as SafeStream Gigabit Multi-WAN VPN-Router with "Highly Secure VPN: Supports up to 20× LAN-to-LAN IPsec, 16× OpenVPN*, 16× L2TP, and 16× PPTP VPN connections."
The asterix (*) links to a comment at the bottom of the whole page "*These functions require the use of Omada Hardware Controller, Software Controller, or Cloud-Based Controller."
This is just the beginning of the nightmare.
Yes, to do anything VPN wise, you need the Omada controller.
After signing up for the Cloud-Based controller I spend half an hour searching for a "device key" before realising that this wouldn't work. You have to install the "Omada Software Controller" onto a PC in the local network, enable "Cloud Access" and then it should discover it and let you add it. You can then link your software to the cloud if you want.
Cool. Let's do VPN now right? No
General Issues
- No logging available. You can't see what went wrong unless you have access to the VPN server logs.
- No status available. You can't see if the device is connected to the VPN or not. You can only try some websites that geolocate your IP to see where you are and if it worked.
OpenVPN
- Username / Password not supported. You heard that right
- Username Password File not supported.
- Only one file can be uploaded: the OVPN file. No cert files, no key files.
- These issues basically mean there's about one configurable way to use OpenVPN as a client on this router and you'd have to set up the server on AWS or something for this to work. Don't even bother wasting your time on this.
LT2P/IPSEC
- Only ExpressVPN seems to support this. NordVPN dropped support for this.
- Insists on having a defined "Remote Subnets" when ExpressVPN insists on putting this to "Dynamic" or "Let server configure".
- Won't work
PPTP
- If you're desperate enough to use this protocol, then you're desperate enough to return this product and buy something better.
All in all, damn. Could've been a brilliant router. Instead it was released half finished. The forum has a few posts of people trying to set this up with VPN services and being told it won't work or that "devs will schedule the work".
I feel like these issues are buried so deep in the backlog that no dev is ever going to bother implementing this properly. There's been one firmware update on 2021-03-03. Five months later and nothing has happened.