Can i tunnel a specific sites to a VPN Connection using DD-WRT?

Question

I am thinking of setting up a DD-WRT router at home. Something that would help make my decision is to be able to tunnel specific sites/ip requests via VPN.

For example, my son loves some shows on BBC Ceebees. I cannot see the site from home, as I am not in the UK. If i use my VPN Provider, i can set my PC to appear to be in London and get to the site.

What I'd like to do, is add the BBC Viewer to my Roku box and make it so all requests to the BBC sites go via the VPN connection to London on my router.

Is this possible? Can someone point me to a configuration to do this?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible as long as you will be able to find a VPN client for the VPN you want to use which works on your DD-WRT router. The prerequsite for what you are trying to achieve will be that the DD-WRT router holds the connection to your VPN. Your mileage may vary depending on the VPN provider you choose. Some make use of proprietary clients which will not work on your router; you will need to use a VPN provider which says what VPN protocol it's using and is willing to hand you credentials.

Once you got that, the question will be how you make the router decide what traffic to route into the VPN tunnel and what not. This is not as easy as it sounds in the first place, because unless you know the IP address or IP ranges of the services you want to access (in your example the IPs of the BBC servers) you will need to implement some tricks with DNS and possibly NAT to separate traffic on your router. This is not a standard feature in any router OS I have seen so far, despite it could be done and might be worth writing a plugin for.