[SOLVED] Do I need a second PC to connect to my home network using a PPTP VPN connection ?

eternalabys

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I'm planning on going on vacation soon and I wanted to have the ability to stream games from my Xbox One X to my laptop, I've been researching a lot on the internet on how to do this but it seems like Microsoft killed the most used way, so now the only way is through a VPN, so finally leading to my question. Can I use a PPTP VPN connection to my router so I can connect to the home network? My router supports having VPN servers and one of them were PPTP, (OpenVPN won't work for me as I don't have a secondary PC to act as my VPN connection) can I connect directly to the router and connect to my Xbox or will it not work?
 
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I've tried the WiFi here and one of my friends who lives here let me use his TV for a little bit to connect my xbox to the WiFi and have my laptop connect to it wirelessly, issue is, is that the WiFi for this building has a messed up network so the UPnP is not even on and the NAT type is strict so my laptop doesn't even see the xbox on the network, my idea is, is to get an ethernet cable and connect straight to my laptop, would this work? I've read that people have done it but no clear answer was given in the end, I'm kinda desperate of trying to get back and play with my buddies online, and if I use a Hotspot instead of the local WiFi would work aswell as the speed of the WiFi sucks and dips randomly very hard.

To wire the...
If you turn your router into VPN server, and connect with a laptop from outside, that laptop will behave as it is connected to your home LAN/WiFi. I would try this going with that laptop to a friend / coffee shop. If you can stream when your laptop is at hope, you should be able to do so remotely over VPN as well.

However, depending your Internet package, you have to expect some latency.
 

eternalabys

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If you turn your router into VPN server, and connect with a laptop from outside, that laptop will behave as it is connected to your home LAN/WiFi. I would try this going with that laptop to a friend / coffee shop. If you can stream when your laptop is at hope, you should be able to do so remotely over VPN as well.

However, depending your Internet package, you have to expect some latency.

I shall try it tomorrow as it's already really late (or really early heh), I shall try it with a mobile hotspot as I've heard those work well and my internet package is I think a 500 Mgb/s one so it should be fine, plus the Xbox is wired so it should reduce most of the latency on the home network side, my router has a gigabit ethernet which is very good.
 
You can use pptp, but be aware that pptp is no longer considered secure. If your router can do l2tp or ssl that would be more secure although probably not as fast. If you can disable the pptp server when you're not using it, that should mitigate any security issues when you're not actively using the server.
 

eternalabys

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You can use pptp, but be aware that pptp is no longer considered secure. If your router can do l2tp or ssl that would be more secure although probably not as fast. If you can disable the pptp server when you're not using it, that should mitigate any security issues when you're not actively using the server.
Sadly, the router only supports PPTP and OpenVPN, I can't really access the router to shut it off as I'm leaving for 3 weeks and it will pretty much be always on, I'm not always going to use the connection though, only for game streaming from said Xbox.
 

eternalabys

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If you're accessing your home LAN remotely via a VPN, stuff that you download to your remote location is being uploaded from your LAN. So it's your home Internet upload speed which matters, not the download speed. Most people's Internet upload speeds a much slower than download speed.
I tested it and the Upload and Download are actually relatively the same.
 

eternalabys

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Also, when creating the PPTP VPN connection do I have to enter the Public IP (The DNS) or my Router's IP? Cause when I try it, it says that the VPN connection gets interrupted, and could be an issue with latency and or the VPN connection is too full of clients, which isn't possible as I'm the only one using it.
 
Not sure what you mean the public ip or the router IP. They should be the same unless you mean the lan ip but that is only internal not on the internet.

I am somewhat surprised this would even work acceptably. Then again I suppose it depends on the game. Most games are not really designed to have large delays between when you push a button and the client software gets it.
 

eternalabys

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Not sure what you mean the public ip or the router IP. They should be the same unless you mean the lan ip but that is only internal not on the internet.

I am somewhat surprised this would even work acceptably. Then again I suppose it depends on the game. Most games are not really designed to have large delays between when you push a button and the client software gets it.

I meant the DNS address which is the public IP and the router IP which is used internally, I've seen people use the public IP so I guess that's what I have to use, and I've seen people play games fairly well and it all depends on the internet latency and speed, on my home network there's practically no latency and my internet package is pretty good, on said vacation I will most likely be using a mobile hotpot which is 4G and the speeds are relatively good, it also depends on what quality setting you have set in the Xbox Console Companion app, if you're using a hotspot and say out in a park it would be recommended to use medium or so settings to reduce any tearing.
 

eternalabys

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New issue: I'm near giving up all hope as Windows just doesn't seem to want to connect to the PPTP VPN, it constantly keeps saying that the connection between the VPN and me got interrupted and that it's very likely that I have latency issues or the VPN connection is full of clients, which isn't possible for either of those situations as I'm the only one using the VPN connection and I'm using a 4G hotspot to test the system. I've even gone as far as completely disabling the firewalls on both my laptop and my router just for this and have port forwarded 1723 to my laptop.

Can anyone suggest anything as I'm practically pulling my hair at this and have no clue on how to make it work anymore as I've tried for 3 days straight to get it working.
 
You should not have to port forward on your vpn router and you can't port forward on the hotspot end.

So I will assume your laptop is connected to the hotspot and you are attempting to open the vpn to your home router that is directly on the internet.

It should work but you are likely running though a carrier nat. Almost no mobile broadband providers give you a public ip address. It should not matter because it is the destination end that has issue with NAT.

That said the reason everyone uses openvpn is it is based only on TCP or UDP. PPTP uses port 1723 BUT it also uses another protocol called GRE to carry the actual data. This needs special support on routers to get past the NAT. This should not apply to you since the router in your house is actually running the GRE tunnel before the NAT.

Maybe GRE protocol is not supported on a mobile broadband. I have never tried it.
 
I meant the DNS address which is the public IP and the router IP which is used internally, I've seen people use the public IP so I guess that's what I have to use,
Technically, it's your public IP. That should be the same as your router's WAN IP address. But I've seen a few ISPs use NAT on their network, in which case your router's WAN IP address will be different from your public IP, and you won't be able to access any services (like VPN) on your home network.

On your home network, go to Google and search for "what's my ip". Compare that to your router's WAN IP address. If they're the same then you can ignore this post. Your problem is something else. If they're different, then your ISP is running some sort of NAT, and it'll be virtually impossible to get this to work.

(Another giveaway is if your router's WAN IP address is 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x, or 172.16.x.x to 172.31x.x.)
 

eternalabys

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Ok, new idea, what if i just use a mobile hotspot on both my laptop and xbox, ive decided to take the console with me but there arent any tv's here for it, can i just use my hotspot so it could stream to my laptop?
 
Maybe I don't know the limitations on a mobile hotspot. You are not really using the hotspot function you are just going between the 2 devices that connect to it. It all depends if the hotspot allows it. There is a feature called wifi isolation that prevents it if they choose to use it. You could likely use any very small router and connect it to nothing and it will do the same thing.

I know very little about how the game streaming function works.
 

eternalabys

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Maybe I don't know the limitations on a mobile hotspot. You are not really using the hotspot function you are just going between the 2 devices that connect to it. It all depends if the hotspot allows it. There is a feature called wifi isolation that prevents it if they choose to use it. You could likely use any very small router and connect it to nothing and it will do the same thing.

I know very little about how the game streaming function works.

Well it just needs to be on the same network, I'll look in to the possibility of doing this as I have no time rn.
 

eternalabys

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I've tried the WiFi here and one of my friends who lives here let me use his TV for a little bit to connect my xbox to the WiFi and have my laptop connect to it wirelessly, issue is, is that the WiFi for this building has a messed up network so the UPnP is not even on and the NAT type is strict so my laptop doesn't even see the xbox on the network, my idea is, is to get an ethernet cable and connect straight to my laptop, would this work? I've read that people have done it but no clear answer was given in the end, I'm kinda desperate of trying to get back and play with my buddies online, and if I use a Hotspot instead of the local WiFi would work aswell as the speed of the WiFi sucks and dips randomly very hard.
 
I've tried the WiFi here and one of my friends who lives here let me use his TV for a little bit to connect my xbox to the WiFi and have my laptop connect to it wirelessly, issue is, is that the WiFi for this building has a messed up network so the UPnP is not even on and the NAT type is strict so my laptop doesn't even see the xbox on the network, my idea is, is to get an ethernet cable and connect straight to my laptop, would this work? I've read that people have done it but no clear answer was given in the end, I'm kinda desperate of trying to get back and play with my buddies online, and if I use a Hotspot instead of the local WiFi would work aswell as the speed of the WiFi sucks and dips randomly very hard.

To wire the systems together you will need to set both systems to static IP, use the same first 3 octets of the IP for them, with the same subnet mask, and the gateway would be the system with the internet connection. Setting up internet sharing should also work. Really a lot of work to just play XBOX while on vacation. Why not just bring a small screen with you to connect to the XBOX? Get a cheap used tv or monitor with hdmi and done. You can find 24" TVs used for like $50 or less.
 
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eternalabys

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Nvm solved it by turning on mobile hotspot on my laptop and connecting my Xbox to my laptop through that, although still had to set up the connection on a TV, it's working perfectly now, everytime I turn on mobile hotspot it automatically connects to it and works with the Xbox app, although yes, getting a cheap TV or monitor would be helluva lot easier than what I just had to go through, I took the long way around and learned some things so it's a win for me.