[SOLVED] What is the best way to use my Smart TV on my computer's VPN network?

[HorseyMD]

I live in Russia (I'm American) and I'm trying to use a USB ethernet adapter to share internet from my ExpressVPN TAP adapter to the USB to ethernet adapter, which I then run a cord from to my smart TV. My ultimate goal in all this is to be able to use my TV on the VPN, allowing me to watch region-locked content like I was in America.



The issue I'm having is that I can occasionally make it work, but when I shut down the computer or put it to sleep, it seems the whole system just stops working...the network sharing settings are the same as they were when it was working, the VPN is still on, but my TV sees no internet connection.



What would be the easiest solution to this issue? Unfortunately my motherboard only has one ethernet port...I reckon it would be a lot easier if it had two.



EDIT: I am on WIndows 10 1909

 

[SkyNetRising]

Don't shut down your computer.
For internet connection sharing to work, computer has to be turned on.

 

[HorseyMD]

Don't shut down your computer.
For internet connection sharing to work, computer has to be turned on.

I know, anytime I try to use ICS, I turn my computer back on and make sure internet sharing is set correctly in my adapter options. I also make sure the VPN is on whenever I try to use it.

The issue is that most of the time, the internet doesn't get shared from the TAP adapter to the USB-Ethernet adapter

 

[bill001g]

You have to remember ICS was first invented to share a dialup modem. It is not much more advanced today. It has much more problems sharing TAP adapters. I always though that was the VPN providers fault but it has lots of trouble with tethered and some USB wifi connections also.

All I can think of is be sure you do not have any power save options turned on. There is not much you can tune in the ICS.

For long term you may want to consider a router that can run a VPN client.

 

[HorseyMD]

You have to remember ICS was first invented to share a dialup modem. It is not much more advanced today. It has much more problems sharing TAP adapters. I always though that was the VPN providers fault but it has lots of trouble with tethered and some USB wifi connections also.

All I can think of is be sure you do not have any power save options turned on. There is not much you can tune in the ICS.

For long term you may want to consider a router that can run a VPN client.

Could you possibly point me towards which specific powersave settings they might be?

I'm sure I could set up some sort of VPN on my Huawei router, but the issue is I often play online video games and stream on twitch, meaning that the VPN would totally destroy that.

 

[bill001g]

I can't say about the huawei router but many vpn clients you can set certain traffic to use the vpn and other traffic to bypass it and go directly to the internet.

The power save is either going to be a windows adapter setting or a bios setting. You system may not even have this feature. It is just a guess. ICS is a huge pain without the added complexity of a VPN running on the same machine.

 

[HorseyMD]

I can't say about the huawei router but many vpn clients you can set certain traffic to use the vpn and other traffic to bypass it and go directly to the internet.

The power save is either going to be a windows adapter setting or a bios setting. You system may not even have this feature. It is just a guess. ICS is a huge pain without the added complexity of a VPN running on the same machine.

I went and checked and didn't see any kind of weird power settings there.

So far, the procedure for connecting successfully seems to be:

1. Do ICS from ethernet in on computer to television.
2. Turn off television.
3. Change ICS from ethernet to TAP adapter
4. ???
5. Profit.

I don't know if theres any way to fix this, it's rather unfortunate.

It doesn't help that my USB-Ethernet adapter seems to like to randomly just stop showing up in device manager randomly, no matter what USB port I use.

 

[Alabalcho]

Get a router with VPN client support, and use it behind your primary router. Then switch WiFi networks from your TV when you need VPN.

 

[HorseyMD]

Get a router with VPN client support, and use it behind your primary router. Then switch WiFi networks from your TV when you need VPN.

Honestly, at that point, it'd probably be cheaper to just buy a super cheap used laptop/desktop and keep it always running with the VPN. I couldn't find a single VPN client enabled router on the electronics website here.

 

[bill001g]

A lot of the tplink model have it and asus also has it in most. If you go asus look for a router that you can load merlin on it has a much simpler to use vpn. You can also use any router that support dd-wrt or tomato both those third party firmware also support vpn.
If you decide to use a old pc load a unix firewall/router on it. It will need dual nic it is very hard configuration to make it function on a single nic.