So basically, I will be away from home for several weeks. Unfortunately, this became the perfect time for our home router to start acting out and factory resetting itself. We are awaiting a new router for replacement, but the time is tight.
My stuff is ethernetted in, so that connectivity isn’t an issue - the issue is that I couldn’t actually connect to the router to restore services even if it had internet by fixing all the settings including port forwarding.
What I would like would be the ability to have a VPN perhaps connected to my homelab, so I can hop on the router and restore the settings if this issue happens while I’m away. Any ideas?
Edit: I settled on Netbird. Thank you for your help!
Without a secondary internet connection this isn’t possible.
The router is the connection - its the gateway (a term we don’t hear much these days).
You could setup an independent connection via a cell modem - becoming a secondary connection. This is common for remote locations or even small businesses that need a failover just for management.
You could even have it on a single machine and have a vpn there. Then you could RDP/VNC to that one machine and manage things from there. I’ve done the VPN this way with Tailscale. One machine has it (I’ve even done it with a Raspberry Pi), then you can RDP/VNC to other machines from there.
But there’s not much I could see you doing if the gateway is down anyway.