VPN --- run on the Blue Iris PC or on the router?

[NVR990]

Hello all, and thanks again to all of the posters who make this a great, helpful forum!

I am interested in setting up remote (WAN) access into Blue Iris for my Windows laptop and my android phone. After reading the VPN Primer by @nayr, I’m leaning toward setting up OpenVPN.

I am trying to determine the pros/cons of:

a) Running OpenVPN on the PC that runs Blue Iris.

b) Running OpenVPN on an ASUS router.

From a security point of view, (from what I understand), doing “a” would require that I forward a port-forward from my router to the Blue Iris machine running Open VPN. The idea of port forwarding makes me uncomfortable, but in this case, I’d be port forwarding to an OpenVPN server, so perhaps it is ok??

On the other hand, doing (a) takes the VPN crypto burden off of the router which, I guess, allows the router to devote more resources to allocate to its other functions?

Any input on which would be simpler to setup? I gather that the PC route requires me to maintain a Dynamic DNS service (are there any good free providers remaining?), whereas Dynamic DNS seems to be free through the ASUS router.

Any other considerations I should be thinking about?

Thanks!

 

[fbnoise]

Have you considered setting up stunnel on the Blue Iris PC? stunnel

If all you're worried about is the video traffic being encrypted (Blue Iris login credentials are already encrypted according to the help file), this might be a simple solution.

 

[looney2ns]

I vote for the open vpn on the router option. Easy to set and it works.

 

[Mike A.]

B. It's built in, easy, works well, and that way your entire network is available via the secured remote connection and you can access other machines/devices as well. Option A. doesn't really get you much of anywhere and it's more trouble for less.

Unless you have some unusual circumstances then load on the router is negligible. Not a good reason to move it elsewhere. Maybe if you had a better true firewall that would be a good case to move VPN off and to that.

No-ip is free still, you just have to confirm it every month. The Asus DDNS is free and easy since it's built in.

 

[Squeeker]

randytsuch has easy to follow instructions for setting up OpenVPN on your Asus router.
That is what I use.

 

[NVR990]

Thanks, all! Based on your feedback, I ordered ASUS RT-AC88U router. Hopefully, the VPN config will be straightforward. One thing not included in Randy’s VPN instructions is how to set up the client side on a PC. I am hoping that it’s just a matter of installing the Window OpenVPN client on the PC and then importing a client.ovpn file that was produced by the ASUS router. This seems to be how he did it on his android and iphone. Thanks in advance Randy!

My idea in setting up the VPN was that I would have full access to Blue Iris, just as if I were sitting in front of the actual Blue Iris PC. So, after using the VPN to tunnel into my LAN, I’d figured I’d use Windows Remote Desktop to take control of the Blue Iris PC.

I just connected to the Blue Iris PC via Remote Desktop from another PC on the same LAN. The latency is very poor: the camera feeds update only every 5 seconds. (I have zero latency when sitting at the actual Blue Iris PC). I can imagine the latency will only be worse when I’m connected via VPN from a remote location.

So, there must be a better way to do this. Without using Remote Desktop or similar, how do you guys get full access to the Blue Iris PC from a remote location? The reason I want “full” access is to be able to download video clips to a remote PC. (The Android app allows viewing of clips, but not saving…as far as I can tell.)


Is there a better way to access and download clips remotely? Thanks!

 

[fenderman]

Thanks, all! Based on your feedback, I ordered ASUS RT-AC88U router. Hopefully, the VPN config will be straightforward. One thing not included in Randy’s VPN instructions is how to set up the client side on a PC. I am hoping that it’s just a matter of installing the Window OpenVPN client on the PC and then importing a client.ovpn file that was produced by the ASUS router. This seems to be how he did it on his android and iphone. Thanks in advance Randy!

My idea in setting up the VPN was that I would have full access to Blue Iris, just as if I were sitting in front of the actual Blue Iris PC. So, after using the VPN to tunnel into my LAN, I’d figured I’d use Windows Remote Desktop to take control of the Blue Iris PC.

I just connected to the Blue Iris PC via Remote Desktop from another PC on the same LAN. The latency is very poor: the camera feeds update only every 5 seconds. (I have zero latency when sitting at the actual Blue Iris PC). I can imagine the latency will only be worse when I’m connected via VPN from a remote location.

So, there must be a better way to do this. Without using Remote Desktop or similar, how do you guys get full access to the Blue Iris PC from a remote location? The reason I want “full” access is to be able to download video clips to a remote PC. (The Android app allows viewing of clips, but not saving…as far as I can tell.)


Is there a better way to access and download clips remotely? Thanks!

every windows machine has a built in vpn client...
what you are seeing with RDP is not latency, its a setting in blue iris that is designed to reduce cpu consumption....blue iris options>cameras
you can also use teamviewer and the like though they add lots of cpu overhead..

 

[NVR990]

every windows machine has a built in vpn client...

I’ve never used VPN before. Is the built-in Windows VPN client compatible with OpenVPN? If so, I suppose I should use the Window client and avoid having to install/configure OpenVPN’s client.

what you are seeing with RDP is not latency, its a setting in blue iris that is designed to reduce cpu consumption....blue iris options>cameras

Wow, Fenderman, you know your stuff! I never would have known it was a Blue Iris setting!
I changed it from “5-sec update” to “Unrestricted”, and it works great! The CPU usage did increase, though pretty modestly (CPU was around 16%, jumped to around 21%).

you can also use teamviewer and the like though they add lots of cpu overhead..

I chose RDP, because I assumed that TeamViewer would get its own servers involved, and that running through TeamViewer’s server would slow things down (more network hops) or compromise security in some way. I’m not really sure.

TeamViewer is certainly simple to use, though. Originally, I’d contemplated running TeamViewer service 24/7 on my Blue Iris PC, but I figured that was more risky than having OpenVPN running 24/7 on my router. Again, not sure.

Thanks again!