Your resume SUCKS!! (get a website instead): ntck.co/3nUNDGp In this video, I built something I actually used on my family road trip….a Raspberry Pi ROUTER!!!! It is the perfect VPN travel router and it kept me and my family secure while we were on the road. In this video, I walk you through every step to build your very own Raspberry Pi Travel VPN router using NordVPN. ✔✔Links and Guide: ntck.co/3bIdITF 🔥🔥Join the NetworkChuck membership: ntck.co/Premium **Sponsored by Hostinger 0:00 ⏩ Intro 1:07 ⏩ what do you need? 2:25 ⏩ the BIG picture 3:28 ⏩ STEP 1 - Bake the Pi (Install OpenWRT) 4:54 ⏩ STEP 2 - Login to your Pi 4:43 ⏩ STEP 3 - OpenWRT Basic Setup 9:29 ⏩ STEP 4 - Configure OpenWRT Network 14:48 ⏩ STEP 5 - Connect OpenWRT to WiFi 20:02 ⏩ STEP 6 - Setup the USB Wireless Adapter 21:59 ⏩ STEP 7 - Wireless network setup 24:16 ⏩ STEP 8 - VPN Setup (with NordVPN)

The long command to install all the drivers is: opkg install kmod-rt2800-lib kmod-rt2800-usb kmod-rt2x00-lib kmod-rt2x00-usb kmod-usb-core kmod-usb-uhci kmod-usb-ohci kmod-usb2 usbutils openvpn-openssl luci-app-openvpn nano For those who want to copy and paste...

I really like how much passion this guy has got for the IT

I’m 9 and don’t like coffee will it still work?

network config options complete at 12:41 firewall config options complete at 13:00 wireless config options complete at 17:21 (followed by "uci commit wireless" (without the quotes)) followed by the command "wifi" (also without the quotes)

Other than completed courses, this is the sort of content I'd love to see more of. Pi projects are easy to do , great skill builders and it's surprising how much you can do with them. I'd love to see more, especially more out of the box stuff. Building our own pocket wifi-router is absolutely perfect and a great skill to have once traveling becomes more viable.

16:00 "hwmode '11a'" is for 5GHz (802.11a and ac) and '11g' is for 2.4 "htmode 'VHT80'" is for 802.11ac and 'HT20' is for 802.11n. Also, 'NOHT' would be for 802.11g. "channel '...'" is the channel in the selected network range "short_gi_40" is for Guard Interval... No idea what that means.

For those wondering, I believe the wq refers to write and quit. Like save the change you just made and close the file.

I actually switched around the use of each wireless device. Since the internal wireless of the Raspberry PI is weaker than the external wireless device, I used that for the connecting devices and the external wireless to connect to whatever public wifi is available since it has a wider range.

I use open WiFi for my dad's house but only because he lives on 20 acres in the mountains, far away from the road and other people, and because he's old an sucks at connecting to WiFi. Love the episode! From one networker to another, I truly enjoy the content you are creating and I love that you are teaching people the most awesome part of IT, networking!

Dude I am going for my cisco CCNA soon and bunch of another courses, but it all starded with your videos and I am so glad that you are creating this kind of content, it really helped me to kick start my path. Keep going man and don't you dare to stop EVER :D

Hey Chuck! Great video tutorial, maybe im blind but that long opkg install command is missing from your video description, anyway, here you go folks: opkg install kmod-rt2800-lib kmod-rt2800-usb kmod-rt2x00-lib kmod-rt2x00-usb kmod-usb-core kmod-usb-uhci kmod-usb-ohci kmod-usb2 usbutils openvpn-openssl luci-app-openvpn nano

Excellent tutorial Chuck. I configured my "vacation router" a little differently. Rather than use a commercial VPN service, my Dual Wifi enabled Raspberry Pi connects back to an L2TP VPN server running on my home router (Mikrotik). This not only tunnels my families devices safely, it also allows me to access all of my devices at home as if I was still sitting at home. It makes me look like I am still sitting at home accessing the internet as usual. This helps when your online services get a "upset" when you try to log in from a different IP address.

*any new project starts* Chuck: "COFFEE!!"

Not only are Chuck’s videos amazing and filled with great technical content, but you can just tell he genuinely loves what he does, wants to be here to teach, and cares about the community. That’s a rare trait and something you just don't find often.

Chuck, thanks to your channel, I've been inspired to setup my own small business network, with pfsense+, vpn and NAS. My next project is to build this travel router. Not bad for a 50-som'n year old guy. :) Thanks for all your work!

A little bit random, but if you happen to have an Atheros ar9271 (Alfa networks), you need the "kmod-ath9k-htc" package. This is the driver for that wifi dongle.

Chunk: makes a vpn router with 17 layers of encryption and 8 different passwords Me: *turns on vpn*

Thank you for the content Chuck 😀😀😀 you're my favorite creator and I'm always excited to watch your videos! You inspire me and your energy is awesome, keep up the great work man!

I slapped one of these together around six months back, works like a charm. I did run into some trouble with configuring my VPN provider in, but that was due to two major technical issues. Coffee and needing to put my fingers on a diet, as I fat fingered my hashed username, running me in circles for 20 minutes before the coffee opened my eyes. ;)

As someone getting into Linux stuff and was ready to throw my computer out a window when I started learning vim... your disdain for vim gives me a lot of happiness.

Thank you! I have spent months figuring out how to do this and gave up. Now it's in one video.

Nice tutorial! 2 things that would have been nice to show. 1- Swapping wi-fi to another config to simulate going to another hotel/place 2 - Handling a captive wi-fi setup requiring some form of authentication to get started. A lot of places require this before you get any traffic to flow and it would definitely require temporarily disabling the VPN and perhaps even taking the wi-fi provided DNS offered by the guest DHCP. 3 - A bonus would have been using wireguard as the VPN protocol. Maybe a follow up?

There was no coffee in the mug. And this, said approx. 1000 times in the video, is crazy and golden.

Really like how he is pretending to drink coffee

Amazing video! It would be really fun to see a follow up video from your trip where you actually use the router in a public place. It would be cool to have a visual example of how to connect to a hotel or Starbucks wifi.

"the cool thing about nano is that you don't have to do any keystrokes, just start typing..." pffft the *cool* thing about vim is that you *have to* do lots of extra commands and keystrokes, and you get such mega vibes from figuring out how to actually just type something you feel awesome!

I love your enthusiasm, your sense of humor, your laid back style of teaching, and how thorough and detailed your lessons are. Plus your incredibly knowledgeable and stay current with all the latest tech. Very impressed with your content

I like how you used vim all the way and then you downloaded "nano" with the "drivers"😂

Here's a video idea for you: "You need to learn VIM RIGHT NOW" Most linux admins / engineers use vim. The first thing I was taught as a linux admin was how to use vim. And once I switched over to vim from nano, I can't imagine using nano anymore.

Do more things with the raspberry pi! I love these videos!

Your x5 daughters are very lucky to have father like you. God bless your family from Pakistan

22:47 "Because he's disabled" That cracked me up! Good job, Chuck!

So, I'd love to see your whole travel setup. This whole router and Plex Media server thing has my brain a spinning.

Thanks for the great video. Am I the only one that cannot find the install driver text in step 7 :( (The notepad file used in the video)

@NetworkChuck I was hoping you could do a redo of this one for a more update version of this? Thanks in advance. :)

The command at 20:42 is: opkg install kmod-rt2800-lib kmod-rt2800-usb kmod-rt2x00-lib kmod-rt2x00-usb kmod-usb-core kmod-usb-uhci kmod-usb-ohci kmod-usb2 usbutils openvpn-openssl luci-app-openvpn nano

What a channel! You're great to watch even for a 64-year-old retired ex-network manager (that's 20 years ago now 😁) - don't you love SNMP??? We live in Germany and have just got ourselves an RV to go exploring. Your Pi+NAS video was just what the doctor ordered and this router video is the icing on the cake. Only... I've been wondering, it would make sense to combine both functions in one box. And I'm thinking of Docker. I'd like to know your opinion, and do you think it would better to install Raspbian, then Docker and run OpenWRT on that? Or to install OpenWRT as the base layer, then Docker and run OpenMediaVault on that? A video combining both these thing would make my Christmas (and give me something to do!) Keep drinkin' that coffee, Chuck!

You should go over if you have a guest login page. Where you have to pop in an email or something to join. Similar to what you can do with unifi. Great tutorial.

I like the way you speak. A lot of people have a fake voice or tone. You seem genuinely excited when you speak.

Thank you Chuck! Following along… I’m trying to get the link and guilds to work… I am unable to view it. I clicked it. Brought me to your Academy… I signed up. Up yet I still cannot find it. If someone can point me in the right direction that would be great.

This would be my favorite IT channel, but I'm a tea drinker. 😂

This is cool. Thanks for making these. I am learning a lot about network security and the capabilities of Raspberry Pi through your channel. Network configuration feels like such a complicated beast to tackle, and if you do something wrong, it could lead to some pretty serious problems, so thank you for this.

"Have you tried turning off and back on again?" LOL.

I was looking into buying a vpn router and wasn't quite satisfied with my search results and I thought I could set it up my self on my raspberry pi. Thanks to this guide of course that got me excited and motivated enough to actually do it. I use Proton VPN and the latest install of OpenWrt which is 21.01 at the time of this writing. I ran into some issues and followed docs directly on the OpenWrt support site and ProtonVPN + some googling of course. There are slightly different turns you need to take when setting up Proton VPN's openvpn configs so I pointed that below as well. Summary of changes: 1. Wireless Config Deprecated Options: - hwmode is now called 'band'. - "option disabled" doesn't get added by default when you plug in the wireless adapter. Although leaving out will actually enable it per OpenWrt doc, but that caused issues of it constantly going down so I just added. It worked like a charm - "option channel" seems to work better when you change it from what it's orginally defaulting to. Did it for both radio0 and radio1 2. Openvpn settings (Proton VPN): - vpn config file and ikev2 username & password are different than your login creds. You can retrieve that from your account settings - You will upload that directly into to OpenWrt and most config will be in place. The only thing I needed to do is add the ikev2 username and password in the GUI box specified in the "edit" section of the openvpn config aread (GUI). Use the first line for the username and second line for the password. ProtonVPN has a guide on how to set it up with OpenWrt (Google How to set up ProtonVPN on OpenWRT routers) Nevertheless, this guide's workflow is sound and it got me in the right direction. My coworker were quite mesmerized when I pulled out my raspberry pi and said " and without a further ado, meet my vpn router" LOL! Hey Check, Can you top this video with how to set up aTor client on Linux OpenWrt?

One major problem I foresee is -- what happens if the public wifi has a login/registration/payment page? I suppose you could temporarily set your computer's wireless MAC to the same MAC as the Raspberry Pi, login to the public wifi through your computer, change the MAC back to the original, and then boot the Raspberry Pi router and use it.

Note: You probably want to assign the External wifi adapter as the client and internal WIfi as the AP ass it does not have an antenna. You will get better throughput this way as your client devices will probably be closer to the pi.

can I use a ethernet to connect to internet and wifi to connect my devices in LAN? thanks

Well, I must eat my words. Broke out my Pi 4 B and just start building the router. Looks like it going to be pretty slick. Thank you.

Wow, NC posted 2 videos same day 🙌

Hey, really cool I love that!!! Can you make a video on how to create a free VPN to install on the Raspberry Pi, thanks.

Sometimes I struggle doing my coffee break watching your videos because you say something funny and I start to laugh 😂😂 Awesome video!!

Homie selling coffee what a great hustle

love your work Chuck!!! I bought my first raspberry pi because of this video. got a different wifi adapter and get nothing but heads aches haha. got everything else going, vpn up and running. so for now, it just needs to be wired until i can source a suitable wifi adapter.

Thank you for the tutorial. I am using a GL-MT300N V2 mini portable router. It has openwrt out of the box, a user friendly web interface including VPN support (can store multiple VPN configs and has internet kill switch) and it can be powered from a laptop usb(3) port. 18EUR from china with shipping.... I think this is the perfect travel router, I am using over a year now without any problem. Rasbperry is great for diy projects, but when traveling I want a stable an easy solution.

I think you exceeded your coffee budget on this video, dude! I had to check several times to make sure the playback speed was set to 1x because your talking sounded like it was about 1.5x. Love your stuff, and great video, as usual! But damn!... Maybe 4 cups then decaf?

Made myself one of these as a travel router and I named my access point "Hogwarts Hall of Wifi." I have been wanting to get a batter handle on Linux command line. Your enthusiasm and this video really helps. Thanks.

Driver Install command @20:50 >> opkg install kmod-rt2800-lib kmod-rt2800-usb kmod-rt2x00-lib kmod-rt2x00-usb kmod-usb-c ore kmod-usb-uhci kmod-usb-ohci kmod-usb2 usbutils openvpn-openssl luci-app-openvpn nano

Don't mean to be a hater, but there arent any links below :(

Dude! I went into this project super doubtful that it would work. I've never had a project like this with IT stuff that's really worked out for me, so I wasn't really hopeful in myself that it would work, especially given that halfway through the project I came upon changes in the code due to the updated version of openwrt. However, I persisted through, and followed your tutorial to a T, and I am now writing this comment on the wifi setup through my rasppi router! I am super excited to try more stuff like this, so thank you for making such great content ❤️

I am loving learning from you. You are so passionate and care about your work and not boring what so ever. Thanks heaps

Love your videos Chuck! Been watching you since I was first getting my CCENT back in 2018. You've kept me inspired on my networking journey. Thanks and keep it up!

I’ve watched this like 8 times since it got posted with all of the hardware sitting around. Finally just set it all up for a company trip with the team. Ready to flex 🤓 thanks man SUPER cool project

Chuck, I can't keep up anymore :) Please can you do a raspberry pi book with all your favourite projects and links to the videos, you're one of my favourite sources for cisco tutorials and now you've engaged with the pi it's amazing. The enthusiasm and readability of the steps make your tutorials so engaging and easy to watch and follow.

Is it possible to do a project like this but I want to use the ethernet port to receive the internet not the built in Wi-Fi

Let me start saying this projects are amazing. I don't know to congratulate you enough. You have charisma and knowledge enough to pass it in a way that is interesting. Another quick thing, from the content generation stand point it's endless topics for everybody. Please keep doing this great videos. Thank you!

That's Crazzy, Keep Going Bhother 🔥🔥🔥

Help...I'm going great all the way until ifconfig wlan1 up. I get the 'no such device' error. Is it a newer device which needs a newer driver? I can't find any info online about it.

that coffe must have some whiskey he stays sipping "coffe" lol

Really cool, this OpenWRT. I setup my travel router with your instructions and it works really well! Thanks for the very clear and fun instructions :)

This was THE MOST informative and interesting Raspberry Pi use I have seen to date. It was amazing to watch, and I WILL be purchasing a "Pi" very soon to duplicate this technique for my use. I do a lot of field service traveling and in hotels all the time. This is exactly what I need, both in those places, as well as in my home. Thank You for your dedication to education for all of us!!

Nerds beware!! I attempted this project this week because it looks awesome, but with a different adapter because I had it. Do not try to use anything with a RealTek chips. Getting them to work is way more work than it’s worth. Otherwise, great video Chuck! I found your channel recently and I love what you do!

ran out of coffee and couldn't finish this - but it seems promising

Great video! I did a similar build a few months ago but with a Pi Zero W and its brilliant for travel, takes no space and can be powered off the laptop worst case.

I've configured a Raspberry Pi to do what you're doing before just for fun (and if I actually could make it function) but I didn't use it for traveling I used it to have at home. It's a fun little project! And thanks for the content! You're the man for doing these step by step tutorials.

I have a Alfa awus036acs usb wifi adapter using the RTL8811AU chipset. Does anyone know if this can be used with openwrt for this project or do I need to buy another adapter with a different chipset?

I wonder how this compares to using a Beryl AX3000 WiFi 6 travel router?

Looks cool but hotel wifi as well as most public wifi at Starbucks usually requires me to navigate through a captive portal on the client in order to get connected. How do you do that on OpenWRT?

This is a great video. Even though doing everything via terminal is terrifying to most people like me, but this is a very clear tutorial and walk me through every step I need.

I loved the video, it had great content. Thanks, Chuck.

72 usd for a raspberry pi 4 1gb here minus everything else, over kill for building a router tbh, can get any supported router by openwrt, ddwrt, fresh tomato etc and do all that but i gotta admit the experience was pleasing to watch and the fact that one can do so much with a raspberry pi is amazing add the knowledge of networking and skills, i enjoyed watching this video… good stuff.

I've been seeing relatively high latency on the built-in pi wifi. It doesn't matter if it's OpenWrt or Raspberry Pi OS. ICMP ping shows roughly 0.6-0.7 ms if checking ethernet, but wifi ranges from 3-4ms. If I replace my OpenWRT pi with an OLD OpenWRT router, wifi there becomes 1ms. The pi's high latency ends up reducing my usable bandwidth over TCP due to window sizing/acknowledgements on appliances where I can't tune window sizes. Are you seeing similar latencies with the onboard wifi vs USB, or what else should I look at to debug my local latencies?

to be honest, for the tasks mentioned (road trip) i use the mikrotik hap ac2 (RBD52G-5HacD2HnD-TC) since it has an IPsec hardware support onboard, the USB port suppoting LTE sticks and it is an accomplished product within appropriate housing and with power supply range 12-30V and regular updates. Anyway, the RPI is also might be useful in many ways, so thanks!

Chuck! I built it! Works with NordVPN. Thanks!

hey Chuck so why not setup proxy chains using TOR after VPN

I use a $15- Orange Pi Zero because none of my bought routers would talk to my 4G LTE mobile broadband and I got tired of using an old Windows laptop with ICS to get my Internet. These little SBCs are great. I also loaded HomeAssistant on it and it controls all my home automation. (I live in a caravan) Simply magic. (edit) PS. Thanks for the VPN walk through. Very helpful. Cheers.

Hey NetworkChuck, curious about a detail - how much storage on a diy router is sufficient to have? In your video this was done with a 32gig sd card. I’m curious what I could factor for the size I give it. Also the enthusiasm I pick up from these videos reminds of a history teacher who was awesome. It’s the way to go because it sure helps when you are challenged by the path. Love this

Chuck, I 'liked' the video, but for me there is something missing. Most hotels/coffee shops/trains now have a banner login page where they expect you to enter an eMail address to get connected. This won't help in that situation... will it? Or when you connect a WiFi client does that get paased through?

Hi Network Chuck, wow two years ago, but still relevant. I've started traveling again and get frustrated by the devices available out there as well as suppliers' WiFi access, so need a good solution. The VPN tunneling will help with my regional streaming services, fantastic! One of the biggest issues I've found is the use of captive portals at hotels etc, they can be a pain, constantly being timed out and re-registering to some, I think a regular scheduled ping can resolve this. But it's logging in with the router, there is no login page on the router itself, so I'm wondering if I should log in using my phone or laptop and then clone my MAC address on the router? What do you think?

I believe at step 5 when you are making changes to radio0 you are changing the hwmode from AC wifi to b/g/n wifi, hence why there is a need to change the channel to 7 as well as changing the htmode (VHT80 = 80MHz - usually for 5GHz wifi). From my own experiences openWRT doesn't like radio0 using 5GHz 80MHz on a PI 3B+/4B (might be fixed on the 4B at this time of writing though). You may also find that the Internet speeds when connected to the wifi network (that is also connected to NordVPN via OpenVPN) aren't the best. I believe you can make these changes by the GUI to radio0 directly as even one typo when doing config by CLI can cause your Pi to become inaccessible in some cases. I've actually figured out how to do this on Pi OS 64-bit since I wanted to be able to use AC wifi on both network interfaces (access point and wifi client), non kernel supported USB wifi adapters, Wireguard connection to PIA VPN and a python app using flask to host a web page that can be used to connect to other wireless networks using a browser. It sounds like a lot but honestly it's quite easy to set up and can be configured in different ways.

using your comment of, "You would think IT would be simple and easy but it isn't, that's why we drink coffee" anytime someone asks me why I drink so much coffee

Tab key, my chuck of chucks. Bash’s autocomplete is often a godsend.

Hi Chuck. It would be great if the travel router would also have 4G or 5G so that you could use that to connect to the internet if no WiFi is available. Making it truly the ultimate travel router ;)

I hate you, Chuck! Every time you put up a Raspberry Pi project, I have to run out and buy a new Pi.

I'm going to start drinking coffee now!

Hey, anyone have the "opkg" command with all the driver installs? Thanks in advanced

Just curious, is there a way for this build to allow for captive portals/TOS agreements?

I love your videos and your explanations You got my respect 😎

How much knowledge this guy have is smashing me. I can't imagine how much time he spends. I've gone through so many videos and Chuck making me thinking I will never catch up to half of his level 😮😮

Thanks @NetworkChuck !! Just a couple of things: I can't find the list of packages you installed, nor the nordvpn link. Please help?!