I have installed the VPN server on my Disk Station and L2TP is the protocol I use. I can access the Disk Station via the VPN server from outside the local network. But it does not hide my public ip address when I surf the internet.
I watched a Youtube video, which talks about “full tunnel” being able to redirect your internet surfing through a local VPN server first so your true ip would not be shown.
I did turn on ‘Send all information’ on my iPhone’s VPN client. I don’t know what’s wrong with my setup or I don’t understand what full tunnel means correctly.
If your NAS is on the Internet, no. And if you’re connecting to VPN from the Internet, no. You would connect to VPN so that the VPN obscures the source you came from. You’re still coming from your home network. So that will be shown.
Your NAS is on *your* network, therefore it uses *your* public IP. It doesn’t matter how you connect to the NAS, it’s route back out is always the same.
If you want an anonymous IP connection, you need to connect to a VPN host that is somewhere else, and because it’s somewhere else, it has a different public ip, thus that’s what the hosts you connect to will see.
The ‘full tunnel’ part is referring to the fact that some VPN hosts only capture HTTP/HTTPs traffic, so your DNS queries, FTP sessions, bittorrent, whatever, are still happening outside the tunnel. You’ll hit reddit from a different IP, but then when your browser starts grabbing assets that build that page, it’ll do some of it outside the tunnel, and believe you me, the tracking services are more than capable of matching those up with you, no matter where the initial connection appeared to come from.
If you are using such software, find better software.
Honestly, if you actually want to be anonymous, not only should *all* your network traffic be behind a VPN tunnel, but you shouldn’t ever use any service or account you’ve ever touched while it isn’t on, because you’ll just be handing back info saying ‘Hi, I’m back again!’ when you reconnect after turning on your tunnel.
It can hide the IP of the network of the device you’re connecting with and replace it with the IP of your home/business where the NAS is. VPNs aren’t built for the purpose you’re discussing in the first place and that’s only a secondary usage when you connect to a company hosting a VPN server.
thanks. that makes sense.
great thanks for explanation in details. it helps me to know more about hiding internet identity, not that I plan to do anything big with it 
Don’t a VPN server on home/business network and one on a different country serve different purposes? the primary purpose to install a VPN server on home network is for accessing local files, isn’t it? At least that’s the most recommended way I have learned.
