Hi all. Hoping someone can answer my question. I’ve set up a surfshark open VPN client on my home router (an Asus AX8) but it’s causing me some issues.
I live in the UK and my kid loves watching cartoons on the BBC through our smart TV. Because the BBC app is location locked to the UK it doesn’t work with the VPN on, and even when I’ve turned the VPN off in the router settings, my location seems to jump around all over the place, and I’ve confirmed this with IP location searches.
I’m aware I could run VPNs on every other device, but I’d really like to put my entire network behind the VPN (other than the TV) if possible. Is there a way of creating an exception for my TV so that it can bypass the VPN? If so can anyone advise how to do it? OR is there a way of location locking my VPN to show as being within the UK? Normally apps on my devices I can choose where I’m located, that doesn’t seem to be an option on the router.
Any advice appreciated! Thanks!
Yes this is possible but the difficulty on how to implement it is largely depending on what router you have. Essentially you want to set up two vlans. One uses the VPN as a gateway to the internet the other vlan goes straight out.
If you use PFsense you can watch some Lawrence systems videos on YouTube and he can explain it way better then me. Odds are there is probably a YouTube video out there. Some AIs like chatgpt or perplexity can also be helpful as well.
This - I did something very similar on my home network. Definitely doable. Understanding and learning how to use VLANs is very useful in networking