HDHR at a different location than Channels DVR Server

You have no routes for the remote LANs at both ends - it’s late here, I will reply tomorrow if you don’t sort it before.

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def outta my league here with the VPNs

Ok, so based on the routing screenshots: You have 2 distinct LAN subnets, 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0 (/24) and 192.168.50.0 255.255.255.0 (/24).

Just because they have the same mask, i.e 255.255.255.0 (/24), does not make them the same subnet. The subnet mask dictates the size of a subnet, i.e the allowed 'range' if you will

So, 192.168.0.0-255, where 0 is the network address and not usable, 255 is the broadcast address and not usable. Usable addresses in the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet are between .1 and .254. This is one subnet.

For your other subnet, 192.168.50.0-255, where 0 is the network address and not usable, 255 is the broadcast address and not usable. Usable addresses in the 192.168.50.0/24 subnet are between .1 and .254. This is another completely separate subnet.

I'm going to assume that:

  • Channels DVR has an IP address on your home network of 192.168.0.100
  • HDHR has an IP address on your Lakehouse network of 192.168.50.100

Now, look at your routing table for the home connection:

Do you see a route to 192.168.50.x? No. Your home connection does not know that the 192.168.50.x network exists. So it uses the default route, i.e via your ISP gateway (which would/should be dropped).

Again, looking at your routing table for the Lakehouse connection:

Do you see a route BACK to your home 192.168.0.x network? No. The Lakehouse does not know that the 192.168.0.x network exists. So it uses the default route, i.e via your ISP gateway (which would/should be dropped).

So we can see that neither end knows about the other end. Yes, you have a tunnel network for 10.10.0.0/24, but this doesn't automatically mean it knows about the other LAN networks.

I'm going to assume that:

  • Home connection, has a 10.10.0.1 address on the tunnelled network
  • Lakehouse connection, has a 10.10.0.2 address on the tunnelled network

So, what are you missing?

  • On the home connection, you need the following route to tell it HOW to reach the Lakehouse network via the tunnelled network

Destination: 192.168.50.0/24 GW: 10.10.0.2

  • On the Lakehouse connection, you need the following route to tell it HOW to reach/route back to the Home network via the tunnelled network

Destination: 192.168.0.0/24 GW: 10.10.0.1

Then, you can see that each network can reach (and route back) to each other, via the connected tunnelled network.

UPDATE: Aside from the raw bandwidth side of things, you need to make sure that the routers you have at both ends are capable of encrypting/decrypting the VPN traffic at the required rate. VPNs can be 'expensive' in terms of processing power, if you don't need encryption you could disable this to lower the overhead.

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Oh, assuming it is OpenVPN you're using, you could probably achieve what you need there.

So that it adds the various routes during connection/start-up, rather than configuring static routes. There might even be UI option to do this, depending on what the routers are, however there are usually options to add your own additional configuration lines.

Added to the OpenVPN server configuration, assuming this is the 'Home' end and the Lakehouse is the client:

## We want to push a route to the Lakehouse side, 
## that it can reach 192.168.0.0/24 via the VPN tunnel
push "route 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0"

## We want to add a route on the 'Home' OpenVPN server, 
## that it should route 192.168.50.0/24 via the Tunnel
route 192.168.50.0 255.255.255.0
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I think I have the routes right now but still no luck with pulling up the HDHR on the home connection over http. What IP should I use on the home network to try and connect to the HDHR?

Home routes

Lakehouse routes

The routes may need adjusting, based on the actual output of your routers - rather than explicit copying for the 'I'm going to assume that' section.

Some questions:

  • I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that you had/have the VPN running between both routers? i.e a site-to-site VPN? Is this the case?
  • If so, have you checked that the VPN/tunnel is actually up? Besides the routing tables. Can you ping, directly from the router CLI/UI, to the other side of the tunnel using the 10.10.0.x addresses?
  • What are the VPN IP addresses, 10.10.0.x, on both ends? These are the gateways to be used in routes

Alternatively, if you remove the static routes and use the OpenVPN server configuration (assuming this is what you're using) it should add the correct routes for you.

I am using the OpenVPN routing as prescribed with the push route and the regular route.

I am able to ping 10.10.0.2 from the client side

Maybe I should just restate what I have going right now since my head is spinning

Home
Asus Router w/ Merlin and OpenVPN
3 TVs with a particular app that need to be routed to the Lakehouse to work (it's a cable company's app that has to be on the same internet connection to work)
Channels DVR server
Note: I plan on adding an HDHR to get local channels from Home. I don't expect any issues since it will be on the same network as the Channels DVR

Lakehouse

  • Asus Router w/ Merlin and OpenVPN
  • HD HomeRun to get Local Channels from the Lakehouse
  • 3 TVs using local network to get the same app as described in Home section. No issues here since they are already on the home network

So, with that in mind (and forgetting my trials at setting up a second VPN server above), I currently have

  • Lakehouse Asus router configured as an OpenVPN server
  • Home Asus router configured as an OpenVPN client.On this client setup, I configured only the TVs to use the VPN tunnel
  • This is all working seamlessly as I am able to use the TV app on the Home TVs

So, where my mind went initially is to setup a second VPN server/client combo with the Server being Home and the Client being the lakehouse so I could then configure the HDHR to only use this tunnel.

Is it right to have 2 VPNs going even? Is there an easier way?

Well, I think that post just confused me further.... :wink:

I am able to ping 10.10.0.2 from the client side

This may well be the local 10.10.0.x IP on the client (Home?) side, so it's not pinging over the tunnel. It's simply pinging the local interface.

3 TVs with a particular app that need to be routed to the Lakehouse to work (it's a cable company's app that has to be on the same internet connection to work)

Hmm, so you're presumably routing ALL of their internet traffic via the Lakehouse for these devices? Seeing as you cannot realistically reroute just 1 App.

I think we need to see the OpenVPN configuration, both ends, and the interface IP addresses for VPN interfaces on both routers. Otherwise just shooting in the dark...

Home Asus router configured as an OpenVPN client.On this client setup, I configured only the TVs to use the VPN tunnel

So you probably have policy routing (via iptables, the firewall) as well, to confuse issues further :wink:

So, where my mind went initially is to setup a second VPN server/client combo with the Server being Home and the Client being the lakehouse so I could then configure the HDHR to only use this tunnel.

But the problem you have here, is that the connection i.e to the HDHR, is going to be established from Channels at the other site, so whilst the HDHR is configured to use the tunnel (to reroute it's egress traffic via the tunnel), Channels ALSO needs to have a route over the tunnel to access the HDHR on its 192.168.50.x address.

Is it right to have 2 VPNs going even? Is there an easier way?

Personally, I'd have 1 VPN, multiple is just going to confuse matters.

This 1 VPN would expose both local networks to the other - i.e you can reach 192.168.0.0/24 (Home) from the Lakehouse, and 192.168.50.0/24 (Lakehouse) from Home. You don't need 2 tunnels for that.

However, your need to have 3 TVs reroute all of their internet traffic via the Lakehouse, possibly complicates matters for a single tunnel (I'm not familiar with what's possible on Asus/Merlin).

Again, personally, I would attack this as follows:

  • To start with, ditch the 2 tunnel solution
  • Get a regular site to site VPN up and running, with 1 VPN, so you can ping/access 192.168.0.0/24 addresses from the Lakehouse and 192.168.50.0/24 addresses from Home
  • With the above working, you should be able to add the Lakehouse HDHR to your Home Channels server using its 192.168.50.x address
  • Then, we'd need to look at policy routing from the 3 x TVs at home, to force them to redirect all of their traffic over the VPN (not just local 192.168.x.x traffic).

Before you get too far down the VPN troubleshooting, from my experience with a similar setup, even with a 20Mbps upload, I wasn't able to get good remote streaming performance. The source HDHR Prime's channels were all mpeg2, which didn't help, but even with expected margin of bandwidth, the pauses and glitches made it unwatchable.

Good point. Wouldn't you be better off with a computer at the lakehouse running the DVR software, and then accessing it using the "Away from home" option in the Channels DVR client?

Yeah. I definitely have thought about switching it around to have the DVR at the lakehouse. My current setup has the dvr at home with the lakehouse in away mode.

My main focus of all of this setup is to try and get to a single ui/app (being channels) that has local channels from both locations and uses tve from my required cable subscription (via the HOA fees at the lakehouse) for the rest

You could run a Channels DVR server at both locations. I run two, but at the same location. One for Cable using an HDHR Prime, the other for just TVE. I've seen posts where it can even run on a Raspberry Pi4. Ask the devs, but I'm sure if you have a monthly or annual Channels Plus subscription you should be OK running two of them. You just need to figure out the VPN (if you still need it for some reason) and the client connections from both locations.

My lord! You do need to be a rocket scientist!

I have an HDHR Prime in PA at my house that my daughter lives in connected to Comcast using a cablecard. Then I have an HDHR Extend (it has the built in transcoder to convert MPEG2 to MP4 so the stream is smaller, ~12Mbps vs ~ 2-4Mbps) setup here in HI on my OTA antenna picking up my locals, mainly so my wife can watch local news and as a backup for the HDHR prime.

This goes through an OpenVPN setup with two Asus routers, one at each location. The PA one is the server and the HI one is the client. They use TAP, not TUN mode. I created two networks, 192.168.1.1 (HI) and 192.168.3.1 (PA). I connected the HDHR Extend to an old Apple Airport Express setup so it extends my ".3" PA network to here, so the Extend gets a ".3" IP address and talks to the server router and the Channels DVR Server that is setup to it in PA via an nVidia Shield w/ an external USB HDD.

Here in HI I connect my AppleTV boxes, one at each TV, as DVR clients and they are on the ".1" network, so they're connected via "Out of Home" to the Channels DVR Server in PA. In this configuration I have both tuners in the guide, watchable and recordable, with the Prime being in PA using Xfinity and the Extend using a HI antenna signal. I did have to set the Extend's transcoder to "Mobile" for it to work seamlessly without buffering and the quality is surprisingly good considering it's really being compressed from the original. It's only for news and the occasional backup that the Prime or TVE can't do, so it is worth the advantage of having it.

When Channels uses the Extend tuner, the signal is received by the antenna here in HI, transcoded to its "Mobile" setting, sent through the VPN to the Shield's DVR Server in PA, recorded if needed, sent back out through the VPN in PA, received back here in HI and played back on my AppleTV Clients and I can't believe it goes through ALL that and still looks pretty damned great, especially converted to Dolby Vision/LLDV on an ATV 4K to my LG C8 OLED or BenQ LK990 projector! :slight_smile:

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That's impressive, but WHY are you converting everything to DV???

Nice setup and explanation! TL/DR I will try using TAP too.

My silence over the weekend is because I was at the lakehouse and setup the server there. I hit some new, unexpected issues with TVE since ABC is not served up there. I am moving the server back down to Home next weekend and should be able to try the TAP method.

Theres a couple of other things I read about trying using TUN types to make sure the broadcast of the hdhr is being picked up. I'll let you all know how I end up

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Because it looks so darn AMAZING!!!! :smiley:

I discovered a way to present DolbyVision on home theater projectors, which many said couldn’t be done and wouldn’t be done, but I did! It’s basically a way to get dynamic tone mapping (on any display) along with native DolbyVision on HT projectors instead of just flat panels.

I decided to research and see if it could be done as a way for the layman (like me!) who can’t afford the high ticket video processor/scalers like the Lumagen Radiance Pro and upcoming MadVR Envy but still take advantage of dynamic tone mapping and amazing video processing that these items provide.

I used to have a Lumagen Radiance Pro connected to my BenQ LK990, but now being able to show native DolbyVision and upconverted to LLDV/DolbyVision HD SDR (Blu-rays, HDTV, etc.) has been the best video upgrade and Godsend I’ve experienced in many years, maybe ever. It’s the best I have ever seen my home theater image look! It takes a bit of setup and knowledge but when you hit the sweet spot, it’s like......WOW!!! :flushed:

Here’s some links about my creation, if you’re interested in reading them. They’ve exploded and are quite long now though, but worth the read:

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=58724442#/topics/3097934?page=1

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Finally got all this working. After restarting several times from scratch, a similar setup to what I had originally tried works (Grrr!)

I ended up having a TUN vpn directing just the lakehouse HDHR over vpn to the Home network. This is working great and am now able to see lakehouse locals and then also home TVE locals.

Exact setup I wanted in the end

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Can you post exactly how it's setup and what the values are for each setting of your TUN VPN? I use TAP and have tried just using the HDHR through it. It sees and connects as if it's on the same network, but I get pixelation and breakups so the signal is unusable to the server on the other side of the VPN tunnel. What's your updload and download speeds at each end again? I have 1,000/35 Mbps at PA location and 200/20 Mbps here in HI.

I guess i may have posted a little early. I too have it all setup and the networks are seeing each other perfectly but I also get pixelation on some of the channels that are HD. SD channels work much better.

To remedy, I tried changing the quality down to 720. Better but still not 100%.

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