Not a request for help but posting in case that it helps others needing remote access to their home network.
There have been several reports of three blocking inbound connection using the port forwarding technique
I have succesfully connected to devices on my local network without needing to open ports or know the current external WAN address by using a VPN connection.
I already had a cheap nordVPN account (good cashback from a cashback site) so it made sense to use that rather than another VPN supplier but principles should be same.
My eero router does not support VPN installation so that was not an option
I already have an always on windows computer on my home LAN so it made sense to use that but I could have used a Linux or MacOS device, theroretically it might be possible to use a Humax but it might not be powerful enough and difficult to install the VPN client.
- I installed NordVPN app on my home PC and on the laptops and phones that I might want to use outside my home,
- Login into NordVPN account from each device
- I turned Meshnet (NordVPNs name for device sharing) on home and away devices
- Nord assigns a name and IP adress for each device (eg mymsman-everest.nord), but they can be renamed to be more meaningful
- From the home machine in Nord setting you grant permission for "Traffic routing through your device" and "Access to your local network" to each of your away devices.
- I also needed to turn off "Local Network Discovery" in Nord settings on an Android phone.
- When away from home, in NordVPN app instead of connecting to a NordVPN provided server you choose your home machine from the device list
- Thats it! All of your internet traffic uses your home WAN address,You can access your NAS and other home devices using exactly the same IP address as you would at home (eg 192.168.4.26)
To access webservers hosted on my home PC I needed to use the IP address of the Wifi adapter instead of the IP address of the ethernet adapter because of the way the NordVPN shares addresses with the client device.
